Disable Recent Documents Listing in Windows

I reviewed the Nirsoft application Recent Files View yesterday which brought two possible privacy leaks to my attention. Windows is keeping a record of files that have been previously opened, to be precise of the 15 most recent files that have been opened and stores them as shortcuts in the hidden folder Recent [My Recent Documents] in the user profile.

Maybe you feel the same way I do about this “feature” and don’t need and want it on your system. I managed to find a way to disable it completely which has the effect that Windows is not recording the most recent files that are opened. I first tried to disable it in the Group Policy Editor but it was only possible to reduce it to 1 record which was not sufficient.

I discovered a Registry key however that disables the Recent Documents completely. To access it you need to open the Registry Editor by pressing Windows R, typing regedit and hitting enter.

Now navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Policies \Explorer and right-click in the right pane. Select New > Dword and name it NoRecentDocsHistory. Change the value of that setting to 1 to disable the Recent Documents.

I did use Recent Files View to verify that Windows is not storing any information about recently opened documents anymore.