In Windows 10, when you open a folder, you can see that on the left, in the menu to quickly access the most important folders, the recently opened files and the folders used are also listed. Precisely, this history of recent files and folders is displayed under Quick Access, at the top left, on each file explorer window.
This can be, on the one hand, useful for quickly opening the most used files and folders, but on the other hand it can be a problem for privacy, if the PC is used not only by us.
Then there are two possibilities: you can keep this feature active and clear the history of recent files when appropriate, or completely disable this history of quick access .
If you want to keep the recent file history active, you can still delete it manually by going to Folder Options .
From an open folder window, press on the File menu at the top, then choose the " Change Folder and Search Options " command and in the General tab of the window, just click on the " Delete " button to immediately delete all the history of Windows Explorer.
No confirmation message appears and the list is deleted immediately.
If, on the other hand, you want to completely disable the history of recent files, you can always remove the cross from the two options at the bottom of the same options window:
- " Show recently used files in Quick Access "
- " Show recently used folders in quick access "
In this case, the folders present in quick access are fixed and can be chosen.
To add a favorite folder to Quick Access, just click on it with the right button and choose the relative option.
To remove it is the same, by clicking on it with the right button the option " Remove from quick access " appears.
Windows 10 also keeps a log of the most used apps and programs .
This list can be partially seen from the Start menu by pressing the Windows flag in the lower left.
To disable the most used apps in the Start menu, press the Windows-I keys together to open the Settings, go to Personalization> Start and on the right side disable the " Most used apps " option.
In this screen there is also another history option that can be disabled for privacy reasons, that of the recently opened Items in JumpList, in Start or in the taskbar .
