File Explorer on Windows 10 keeps track of all your searches to make it easy to find the same files again. While the search bar can be useful for quickly searching for large files or viewing recent searches, it can also reveal your searches for sensitive files if you share a computer. own with others.
You can quickly clear File Explorer search history using several methods and keep that search box clean. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know, from deleting specific search terms to completely disabling the search history function in File Explorer.
How to delete specific search terms in File Explorer
If you just want to remove a few search terms from File Explorer, you can do so directly from the search bar in File Explorer. This is the way.
Open File Explorer and type the term you want to remove from the history, or click the search box to see recent search terms.
Now use your mouse to navigate to the search term and click the cross to delete the search term.
Alternatively, you can also use the down arrow key to highlight a specific search term and press the Delete key to remove it from File Explorer.
How to clear the entire search history in File Explorer
While deleting specific search terms is quite easy, it is also a bit time consuming when you want to delete more than a few search terms. Fortunately, you can delete the entire File Explorer search history in Windows 10 with just a few clicks.
Method 1
Just like deleting specific search terms, you can also delete your entire search history from File Explorer itself.
Step 1: Open File Explorer and use the search box at the top right to run a search for anything.
Step 2: Now switch to the Search tab that appears. In the Options section, expand the Recent Search menu and select the ‘Clear search history’ option from the list.
After you clear your Search history, the Recent Search option will be grayed out.
Method 2
Alternatively, you can also use the Windows Registry to go through your previous searches to delete individual search terms or all of them at once.
Step 1: Open the Start menu, type in edit, and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Step 2: In the Registry Editor window, go to the address bar at the top. Paste the address below and navigate to WorldWheelQuery quickly.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery
Step 3: You will find the DWORD keys that store the File Explorer search history value in the right pane. Keys are listed numerically starting from 0. Here, 0 represents the oldest search term, while the highest number (in my case 4) indicates the most recent search term. You can double-click the DWORD key to define the search item.
Step 4: To delete a specific entry, right click on that particular key and select Delete option. When prompted with the warning dialog, click Yes.
Similarly, you can also delete the entire search history by right clicking on the WorldWheelQuery entry and selecting the delete option.
This will delete all search history stored in File Explorer.
How to disable File Explorer search history in Windows 10
While you can quickly clear File Explorer search history using the methods above, if these search suggestions aren’t helpful to you in any way, disabling them all together is a good idea. reasonable thing. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: Open the Start menu, type in re-edit and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Step 2: Now, in the address bar at the top, copy and paste the address given below to navigate to the following key.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\
Step 3: In the right pane, right-click anywhere in an empty area and navigate to New > Key. Name that Key ‘Explorer’.
Step 5: Inside New Key, right click again on the empty part, go to new and select DWORD (32-bit) Value from the list.
Step 6: Name that DWORD item ‘DisableSearchBoxSuggestions’. Then double click on the entry to change its value to 1 and click OK.
After this, Windows Explorer will not show your search history. If you want to revert these settings, follow the same steps and remove the ‘DisableSearchBoxSuggestions’ key.
Bonus: Clear recent file history from File Explorer
Even after clearing your previous searches, recently opened files still show up under Recent Files in File Explorer. Fortunately, you can quickly delete them right from File Explorer itself. Read on to find out how.
Step 1: Open File Explorer. Click the File menu at the top and select ‘Change folder and search options’ from the list.
Step 2: In the General tab, click the Delete button in the Privacy section and then click OK.
That’s it. All your recent file history will now be deleted from File Explorer.
Leave No Trace Behind
Having search suggestions in File Explorer can be helpful or frustrating, depending on how you see it. Either way, deleting or disabling search history is a fairly straightforward and easy thing to do.
If you’re looking to switch from the default File Explorer on Windows 10, here are the best tabbed File Explorer alternatives you can try.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
