How to Use Quick Access in Windows 11

Quick Tips

• Quick Access in Windows 11 makes it easy to access your frequently used folders and recently opened files.
• You can manually add or remove files and folders from Quick Access.
• If you don’t use Quick Access at all, consider disabling it in File Explorer.

Pin or Unpin Folders to Quick Access

When you open File Explorer on Windows 11, you’re greeted with Quick Access, which displays your 10 most frequently used folders and 20 most recently accessed files. You can customize Quick Access by pinning your favorite folders for quicker access. Here’s how.

Step 1: Press the Windows key + E to open the File Explorer.

Step 2: Navigate to the folder you wish to add in Quick Access. Right-click on it and select Pin to Quick access.

If you wish to unpin a folder from Quick Access, right-click on the folder under Quick Access, and select Unpin from Quick access. Similarly, you can also remove a recent file from Quick Access by right-clicking on it and selecting Remove from Quick access.

Prevent Quick Access from Showing Recent Files and Folders

While removing a file or folder from Quick Access is easy enough, you can also prevent Quick Access from showing most used folders or recently used files entirely. Here’s how.

Step 1: Press the Windows key + E to launch File Explorer. Click the three-dot menu icon at the top to select Options from the list.

Step 2: In the Folder Options window, switch to the General tab. Under Privacy, uncheck the boxes that read Show recently used files in Quick access and Show frequently used folders in Quick access.

Step 3: Hit Apply followed by OK.

How to Reset Quick Access on Windows 11

If you’ve cluttered Quick Access by pinning too many folders, you can reset it to start from scratch. Here’s how:

Step 1: Open the search menu, type in cmd, and select Run as administrator.

Step 2: Run the following commands one by one.

del /q /f %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\*
del /q /f %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\*
del /q /f %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\CustomDestinations\*

And that’s it. This will reset Quick Access on Windows.

While File Explorer doesn’t have an option to reset Quick Access directly, it does allow you to clear File Explorer history. If you only want to clear the current history from Quick Access, here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Open File Explorer and use the three-dot menu in File Explorer to open Folder Options.

Step 2: Under Privacy, click the Clear button to remove Quick Access history.

How to Completely Disable Quick Access on Windows 11

If you don’t like the idea of using Quick Access, you can also remove it entirely from File Explorer. For that, you’ll need to modify the registry files on Windows. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Press the Windows key + R, type regedit in the box, and press Enter.

Step 2: Use the address bar at the top to navigate to the following key.

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Step 3: Right-click anywhere on the empty space on your right, choose New, and select DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name it HubMode.

Step 4: Double-click on the newly created DWORD and change its value to 1. Then, click OK.

Restart your PC after this, and you’ll no longer see Quick Access in File Explorer. You can re-enable Quick Access at any point by following the same steps above and deleting the HubMode entry.