Quick Access is a new feature in Windows 10 File Explorer navigation pane. In Windows 8.1 Explorer Navigation Pane, you had Favorites, but now Quick Access seems to have replaced it. This feature is useful, as it helps users quickly navigate to locations which are frequently used by you, as well those, which were recently used by you.
Windows 10 users may have noticed that by default, File Explorer opens to Quick Access. Windows 10 allows power users to fine-tune the operating system to their liking, rather easily. It seems a majority of the user feedback to Microsoft centered around users demanding the choice to enable or disable different UI elements, easily. So if you wish, you can make File Explorer open to This PC instead of Quick Access.
Alternative: Turn Off Recent Items Through Group Policy Editor If you’re managing a computer with multiple users, and using Windows 10 Pro, you can also tweak this setting through Group Policy. Press “Win + R” to open the Run box and type “gpedit.msc”.
If you wish, in the interest of Privacy, you can also disable Quick Access in the Navigation Pane, in a way. What you can do is stop Explorer from displaying the recently and frequently used files and folders there. Let us see how to do it.
Disable Quick Access – Do not show folders
To disable the Quick Access features, what you can do is disable showing of recently and frequently used files and folders in File Explorer.
To remove frequent folders and recent files list from Quick Access, open File Explorer, click on View tab in Ribbon and then click on Options, and then and then Change folder and search options, to open Folder Options.
You’ll have to uncheck the following two check-boxes present under the Privacy section:
- Show recently used files in Quick Access
- Show frequently used folders in Quick Access
Click Apply and Exit. The action will instantly remove these two sections from Quick Access in File Explorer.
![Turn Off Recent Files Quick Access Gpo Turn Off Recent Files Quick Access Gpo](https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Open-gpedit-to-disable-recent-items-650x480.png.pagespeed.ce.NN3RKB30pe.png)
Clear Quick Access History
To clear your Quick Access history press the Clear button against Clear File Explorer History.
You can also Unpin the pinned items like Desktop, Downloads, etc. from the left side of the navigation pane.
In this way, you can prevent Windows 10 from displaying the recently and frequently used files and folders, in Quick Access and hence maintain your privacy.
See this post if Quick Access in Windows 10 is not working or broken.
![How to turn off recent files How to turn off recent files](https://www.itechtics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/7-2-670x278.png)
If you need to troubleshoot any issues, feel free to visit our Windows 10 Forums.
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We are currently running windows server 2012 R2.
We have upgraded computer to windows 10 and we wish to configure the setting Open file explorer to from GPO. We would like the file explorer open to This PC insted of Quick access. You can see wich setting on this image :(first setting on general tabs)
How can I configure this setting from GPO?
EDIT :
For now we are going to apply a registry modification using group policy editor. But a real GPO or GPP will be better if it's possible.
1 Answer
I don't see a group policy setting for this, so you will need to use a User Registry Group Policy Preference.
If you want it to behave like a traditional Registry group policy, you may want to consider checking the box for 'remove this item when it no longer applies'. If you want it to apply only to Windows 10, you may want to consider applying the following WMI filter or WMI item level target: