How To Remove Quick Access From Windows 10 Navigation Pane

The Quick Access in the Windows 10 File Explorer navigation pane shows Desktop, Downloads, Documents, and Picture folders by default. In addition to these folders, it also displays your frequently used folders so that you can quickly access your frequently opened folders. Besides that, you can manually pin your favorite folders to the Quick Access in the navigation pane.

Quick Access is a great feature. However, not all users find it very useful, and many want to remove the Quick Access icon from the navigation pane. While the File Explorer allows you to unpin all folders from the navigation pane Quick Access, it doesn’t allow you to remove the Quick Access icon.

If you are not using the Quick Access feature, you can remove the Quick Access icon from the navigation pane by making a small change to the Registry.

Remove Quick Access from File Explorer navigation pane

Here is how to completely remove the Quick Access icon from the File Explorer navigation pane in Windows 10.

Step 1: Open the Registry Editor. You can do so by typing Regedit in the taskbar search field and then hitting the Enter key.

Click on the Yes button when you get the User Account Control screen.

Step 2: In the Registry Editor window, navigate to the following folder:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Tip: Copy and paste the above registry key path in the Registry Editor address bar and then hit the Enter key to navigate to the same quickly.

Step 3: On the right side, right-click on an empty spot, click New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name it as HubMode.

Step 4: Finally, double-click on the newly created HubMode and set its value data from 0 to 1 to remove the Quick Access icon from the File Explorer navigation pane. If you ever need to restore the Quick Access, right-click on the HubMode value and then click the Delete option.

Please note that Windows 10 will continue to open the File Explorer to the Quick Access window unless you have changed that. It’s just that the Quick Access from the navigation pane will be removed when used this method. And if you want to turn it off as well, refer to the directions in our how to disable the Quick Access in Windows 10 guide.

If the Quick Access not showing recently opened files, refer to our fix the Quick Access not displaying recent files article.