Windows 10 May 2019 Update: How to Reset Quick Access Settings

[The AchieVer]

Windows 10 May 2019 Update: How to Reset Quick Access Settings 

 

Like its predecessors, Windows 10 May 2019 Update, or Windows version 1903, comes with Quick access, a feature that allows you to quickly browse files stored in specific locations when opening File Explorer.

While many don’t use Quick access at all, I think this is one of the most useful features of File Explorer, and I manually set it up every time I clean-install Windows on a new device.

If you’ve never used Quick access on your Windows computer, simply fire up File Explorer and then look in the left sidebar for this dedicated section. On Windows 10, it uses a little blue star icon by default.

Basically, Quick access is a collection of shortcuts to certain locations on your computer. It is always displayed on top of all the other folders on your device in the left sidebar.

Windows allows you to pin and unpin folders to Quick access with just a right-click. For example, if you want to pin a new folder to Quick access, right-click this folder > Pin to Quick access. It should then show up in the sidebar with a small pin icon.

Windows 10 May 2019 Update features the same options as the previous OS versions, and it actually lacks features to reset Quick access completely. For example, if you right-click Quick access and launch its settings screen, the only options that you get are the following:

Show recently used files in Quick access
Show frequently used folders in Quick access

You can also Clear File Explorer history, but this doesn’t reset Quick access to the default configuration.
 

 

 

Technically speaking, resetting Quick access and returning to the original configuration comes down to unpinning all folders and keeping only the folders that Microsoft pinned by default in Windows 10.

However, there are moments when unpinning a folder fails for no clear reason, in which case you can just reset Quick access altogether.

To do this, the first step is launching an elevated Command Prompt – this is a Command Prompt instance that you run with administrator privileges.

Click Start menu > type cmd.exe > Right-click Command Prompt > Run as administrator

At this point, you should make sure that you want to reset Quick access because there’s no way to back it up and restore your pinned folders at a later time. Note that resetting Quick access does not delete data in the pinned folders, but only unpins these folders; you can still browse files stored in there by manually browsing to their locations.
 

 

 

The command that you need to use for resetting Quick access is the following (copy and paste the code below in the elevated Command Prompt window that you launched earlier):

del /F /Q %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\*

This command is being used to delete the settings stored at the location above and which Quick access loads for your folders.

You don’t need to reboot the device after running this command, though you are recommended to do it, especially if the pinned folders are still there, but you can no longer browse their files.

Windows 10 May 2019 Update is projected to launch for production devices earlier this month, as Microsoft is now testing the RTM build with help from users enrolled in the Windows Insider program.

The screenshots you see here were taken on a preview system running the latest version of Windows 10 in the Release Preview ring – this is pretty much the same build that users will get when the public rollout starts, minus a few improvements here and there that would be included in future cumulative updates.

 

 

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