How to Use Quick Access in Windows 10?

Have you seen the quick access feature in Windows 10? The quick access feature of Windows 10 reduces the time of navigation in between the folders.

What is Quick Access in Windows 10?

Quick access feature of Windows 10 provides you quick access to the file and folders that you have either access recently or you access them frequently. The quick access feature saves your time. It is not that the quick access points only recently used or frequently used files and folders you can even manually pin a folder to the quick access menu.

Whenever you open the File Explorer window it opens with Quick Access. You can view the recently or frequently accessed folders at the left side of the file explorer window in the navigation panel. While at the right side of the window it shows up to 10 frequently accessed folders and 20 recently accessed files.

1. Pin a Folder to Quick Access
2. Remove from Quick Access
3. Display Only Manually Pinned Folder
4. Disable Quick Access
5. Clear Quick Access History
6. Add Tools to Quick Access Toolbar

Use of Quick Access in Windows 10:

1. Pin a Folder to Quick Access

To manually pin a folder to Quick Access you have two methods.

Method 1

Remove a folder from Quick Access just select and right-click on the folder that you want to pin to quick access. Among the displayed options you have to click on ‘Pin to Quick access’.

Method 2

Select the folder that you want to pin up and click on the Home tab of the window. Here, under the ‘clipboard’ group you have to click on ‘Pin to Quick access’.

Method 3

In the navigation panel of the file explorer window, you have to right-click on the folder and click on ‘Pin to Quick access’ from the displayed option.

2. Remove from Quick Access

Select the folder which you want to remove from Quick Access. Right-click on the folder and from the displayed menu click on ‘Unpin from Quick access’.

3. Display Only Manually Pinned Folder

Step 1: In the File Explorer window, you have to click on Options under the View tab.

Step 2: A Folder Options window will pop up where under the Privacy section you have to uncheck the checkboxes to not display the frequently used files or recently used files in the quick access menu. Finally, click on Apply and OK to save the changes.

4. Disable Quick Access

Step 1: In the File Explorer window, go to the View tab and then click on Options.

Step 2: Now in the Folder Options pop-up window, under the General tab you have to make sure that you have not selected ‘Quick Access’ in ‘Open File Explorer to’. In the image below, you can see that I have selected ‘This PC’. So, whenever the file explorer will be launched, it will be launched with ‘This PC’.

5. Clear Quick Access History

Step 1: Again, in the File Explorer window, go to the View tab and click on Options.

Step 2: In the Privacy section, you have a ‘Clear’ button, which will let you clear the entire history of File Explorer. Finally, click on Apply and OK to save the changes.

6. Add Tools to Quick Access Toolbar

In the file explorer window, you have to go to the Home tab, the tools available here can be added to the quick access toolbar. Just right click on the tool and from the displayed menu click on add to quick access toolbar.

So, this is all about how you can add and remove folders, files and tools to the quick access menu.