Unable to disable nor shrink recentf-mode

Question

Loading recentf (180MB) makes emacs unusable recently. Simple M-x calls take almost a minute each and everytime I see a recentf related message. As others already asked I'm unable as well to disable recentf-mode (it simply continues running after toggling). Deleting/moving the file didn't help.

Any ideas on how to mitigate?

My .xinitrc

    emacs --daemon -f exwm-enable
    exec emacsclient -c

Unfortunately emacsclient misses the -Q option in order to debug

Answer 1

There are several variables defined in recentf.el that you can use to control what gets saved in the recentf list. And you can use command recentf-cleanup to cull entries that don't satisfy those restrictions.

A few of the variables (user options, in fact) that you can use:

• recentf-max-saved-items: Maximum number of items of the recent list that will be saved.
• recentf-max-menu-items: Maximum number of items in the recentf menu.
• recentf-keep: List of regexps and predicates for filenames kept in the recent list.
• recentf-exclude: List of regexps and predicates for filenames excluded from the recent list.
• recentf-auto-cleanup: Define when to automatically cleanup the recent list.

Use M-x customize-option to customize any of those...