In addition to Desktop and Downloads, your Documents and Pictures folders are pinned here as well. Second, Quick Access contains more special shortcuts-called pins, or pinned items-than did Favorites. In Windows 10 Technical Preview 2 Tip: Configure File Explorer to Open to the This PC View, I explained how you can reverse that change. This marks a bizarre return to the document-centric user experiences I just wrote about in my Windows 95 retrospective. At first blush-and when you first install Windows 10-it looks and works much like Favorites.īut Quick Access works quite a bit differently than did Favorites in Windows 8.1.įirst, and most annoyingly, Quick Access is the default view in Windows 10. In Windows 10, Favorites has been replaced by Quick Access, which provides a superset of the former’s functionality. I often add locations for the books I’m working on and my article series, for example. You can use this section to access frequently-needed folder locations, like Desktop and Downloads. In Windows 8.1, File Explorer includes a handy Favorites section in the Navigation pane on the left. Note: This tip is derived from Windows 10 Field Guide, my upcoming e-book about Microsoft’s new operating system. But you can fortunately reverse this behavior and cause Quick Access to work more like Favorites. Many users will find this annoying-and I certainly do.

In Windows 10, Microsoft has replaced the Favorites view in File Explorer with a new Quick Access view that also automatically highlights recently and frequently accessed files and folders.

Quick access popup review