Remove Favorites, Frequent Folders or Recent Files in Windows 10 Explorer

When you open the File Explorer in Windows 10, or more precisely the Windows 10 preview that Microsoft released two weeks ago, you will notice that it starts on a Home page instead of This PC.

This Home page lists the favorites, frequent folders and recent files, but no drives for example. These can be accessed on the left in the sidebar though along with networks drives or the cloud service OneDrive.

Depending on how you use the computer, you may not need one, some or all of the special folders displayed under Home. The favorites are for instance displayed on the left side as well directly which makes the listing under Home redundant if you ask me.

Here is a short overview of what the special folders display on the screen:

• Favorites display all favorite folders. If you have many, it may get crowded under Home.
• Frequent Folders display ten folders that are used frequently on the system.
• Recent Files lists twenty files that have been used most recently by the user (created and edited).

You can remove these folders from the Home page. Here is how that is done:

• Use Windows-r to bring up the run box of the system.
• Type regedit and hit enter.
• Confirm the User Account Control prompt.
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HomeFolder\NameSpace\DelegateFolders using the menu on the left.
• To remove Favorites, right-click on {d34a6ca6-62c2-4c34-8a7c-14709c1ad938} and select rename from the context menu. Add a - (minus) in front of the string so that it looks like this: -{d34a6ca6-62c2-4c34-8a7c-14709c1ad938}
• To remove Recent Folders perform the same operation on the string {4564b25e-30cd-4787-82ba-39e73a750b14}
• To remove Recent Files do the same for {3936E9E4-D92C-4EEE-A85A-BC16D5EA0819}

The changes are visible immediately, it is not necessary to restart the explorer.exe process.

When you delete all three folders, Home displays a blank page. You can change that by replacing it with This PC. To do so create a new key with a right-click on DelegateFolders and the selection of New > Key.

Name the key {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}. Double-click on Default afterwards and enter This PC as the value.

There is another option to remove recent folders and files from the Home page. You can disable the recording of recent information on the system completely by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting properties from the menu.

Switch to start menu in the window that opens up and uncheck "store and display recently opened items in the start menu and the taskbar".

This displays the drives list under Home.