Removing Show Recent History and Recently Open Documents from Windows Explorer

How to remove the Recent History and Recently Open Documents from Windows Explorer Using the Registry Editor

Press the Windows Key + R, type regedit, and hit Enter.

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer on the left panel.

Look for the ShowRecent DWORD value on the right panel, or create it if it is missing by right-clicking, choosing New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, and naming it ShowRecent.

Double-click ShowRecent and change its value data to 0 to disable/remove the recent history, or 1 to enable it.

Then go to  

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced and change Start_TrackDocs to 0 to stop tracking recent documents.

Restart File Explorer or sign out and back into your account for the changes to work.

The end result looks like this