Recent Files Exclusions is a free app that provides a way to recursively exclude files and folders from the Windows Recent Files list (the lower pane in Explorer’s home view). This capability is not otherwise available since Windows only allows hiding specific files from Recent Items, after the fact.
Or get it from the Microsoft Store …
This application is open source. View the code on GitHub.
Windows only provides the ability to exclude (hide) specific files from Recent Items, one by one, after the fact. Further, removal of a folder from Quick Access does not prevent its files from being added to the Recent Files list.
Recent Files Exclusions monitors the Recent Items database in Windows and prunes it in real-time when a change occurs. You can exclude any path or filenames by using a matching substring. For instance, accounting would match all files in c:\users\jeremy\accounting, or a specific filename like accounting-export.csv.
Simply install and it’ll live in your system tray, pruning your Recent Files in real-time. You can specify your exclusion list by clicking the tray icon to open its main window, or re-launching the app.
0 = success (including over-top replacement)
1 = failure or user abort