Clear Windows Explorer history in Windows 10

Stefan
Clear Windows Explorer history in Windows 10

If you use Windows Explorer, you will notice that the Explorer displays all recently opened files and folders in the “Quick Access”.

Quick access provides an overview of “frequently used folders” and “recent files”. This is an overview of the history. You can delete this history.

Clear explorer history

Besides clearing history, you can also delete frequently used folders and delete recently opened files from quick access. In this way, history is no longer shown at all in the Windows Explorer.

Clear Windows Explorer history in Windows 10

Open Windows Explorer. In the ribbon, first click on “View” and then on “Options”.

Open Windows Explorer options in Windows 10

Clear File Explorer history

In the folder options, click on the “General” tab. To clear the file explorer history, click the “Clear” button.

Clear explorer history

Show recently used files in Disable Quick Access

Then in the “Privacy” section you can choose to “recently used display files in Quick Access”. This way, recently opened files will no longer appear in the Windows Explorer.

Disable showing recently used folders in Quick Access

To prevent recently used folders from also being displayed in the Windows Explorer, disable the “Show recently used folders in Quick Access” option.

Disable recent files and folders in Windows Explorer

After clearing the Explorer history and disabling frequently used folders and files, you can see the result in the image below.

No more used folders and files in Windows Explorer

I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading!


Problem solved?


Help other people too.
Share this article on a website, forum or via social media.

Join our new computer forum for questions and computer help.
Do you have a computer question?

The email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *