This extension adds a switch to enable or disable the desktop icons. This is also possible via gnome-tweak-tool, but this is for faster access to turn the icons on and off...
Adds an icon for recently used items at the top panel; clear list by click; left click: open file, right click: open containing folder; Settings for: number of items, number of items under "more" and blacklisting options are defined at the top of extension.js (see https://github.com/bananenfisch/RecentItems for more infos).