autobookmarks

Like recentf but better.

How it works

This package doesn't provide any UI, it only implements the back-end "store" and an API you can use to retrieve the bookmarks.

The two main functions are abm-visited-buffers and abm-recent-buffers to retrieve lists of visited and recent buffers.

This package automatically adds all killed buffers, according to abm-killed-buffer-functions, to the list of recent buffers. When you visit a recent buffer, its associated bookmark is removed from the recent list and moved to the visited list. When you kill a visited buffer, its associated bookmark is moved to the recent list.

When you visit a new buffer which is not recent it is added, according to abm-visited-buffer-hooks, to the visited list. This ensures that newly opened buffers are stored in case of a crash. When you restart emacs, they will be available as recent buffers (they are not stored as recent right away because they are active and so shouldn't be on the recent list---that list only stores buffers which aren't visited)

You can restore a recent (killed) buffer by using abm-restore-killed-buffer to which you pass the stored bookmark.

You can toggle this mode on and off by using autobookmarks-mode, which is a global minor mode.

The (lack of) UI

The author uses sallet package to provide seamless integration of bookmarks with buffer switching/finding files. You can write an ido or helm interface fairly easily. If someone does so, feel free to contribute it back as a patch.

The data is stored in the same format as emacs bookmarks ((info "(emacs) Bookmarks")), so it should be possible to add a bookmark interface for it as well.