Home in Windows 11 File Explorer is nothing but rebranded Quick Access. The Quick Access feature, introduced first with Windows 10, has been renamed Home in Windows 11 22593 and later builds.
Home, which the File Explorer opens by default, shows your most frequently visited folders, pinned files (as Favorites), and recently opened files.
In Windows 11, Home shows up to 25 recent files and up to 13 frequently opened folders. Home (known as Quick Access in Windows 10) makes accessing your recent and frequent files and folders easy.
If you do not like or use File Explorer Home, you can configure the File Explorer open to This PC instead of Home. However, doing so will not remove Home from the File Explorer navigation pane (sidebar).
To remove the Home from the File Explorer navigation pane or sidebar and disable it, you need to manually edit the Windows Registry.
This guide shows you how to remove Home from the File Explorer navigation pane in Windows 11.
Disable and remove Home from File Explorer in Windows 11
IMPORTANT: We recommend you create a manual restore point so that you can restore your Windows 11 PC quickly if something goes wrong while editing Registry!
Step 1: Open the Registry Editor by typing Regedit in the Start/taskbar search field and then pressing the Enter key.
When you get the User Account Control prompt, click the Yes button.
Step 2: In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Step 3: On the left side, select the Explorer key. Now, on the right side, right-click on an empty spot, click New, click DWORD 32-bit Value, and name it HubMode.
Step 4: Double-click on the newly created HubMode and set its value data from “0” to “1”. Click OK.
Step 5: Next, navigate to the following Registry key:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace_36354489
Step 6: Here, on the left side, right-click on {f874310e-b6b7-47dc-bc84-b9e6b38f5903} key (make sure that you have selected the correct key) and then click Delete. Click Yes when asked for confirmation.
Step 7: Finally, open the Task Manager and restart the Windows Explorer process to get rid of Home from the File Explorer navigation pane.
Open File Explorer to This PC by default
Step 1: Open Folder Options.
Step 2: Under the General tab, select This PC from the drop-down next to the Open File Explorer to option.
Step 3: Click the Apply button. That’s it! From now onwards, File Explorer will open This PC by default instead of Home. Note that this will not remove Home from the File Explorer navigation pane, and you can switch to Home by clicking on its entry in the sidebar.
Our how to remove Gallery from File Explorer navigation pane in Windows 11 guide might also interest you.
Dennis says
Thank you,
This worked except the key {f874310e-b6b7-47dc-bc84-b9e6b38f5903} was under NameSpace there was no NameSpace_36354489. Tehn after that I did not have any need to restart File Explorer in Task manager as file explorere defaulted to This PC. Yeah!