The Recents folder in macOS Finder is more powerful than you might think. At its most basic, it’s useful for gaining access to the files you have recently worked with. But Recents is a Smart Folder, which means it ties into the macOS search engine Spotlight.
An important feature of Spotlight is the ability to prevent it from searching in certain locations. Read on to find out how to use this to hide some of your recent files from Finder.
How to Hide Recent Files
The Recents view is one way of locating recently used files on your Mac. You can hide files from this view by excluding individual folders from Spotlight search. Finder won’t show any files directly inside that folder or in sub-folders.
Just follow these steps:
- Open the System Preferences app—you can do this quickly via the global Apple menu.
- Click on the Spotlight icon.
- Go to the Privacy tab.
- Click the plus (+) button near the bottom of the window.
- Browse to the folder you want to exclude.
- Click the Choose button in the bottom right.
Once you’ve added a folder, you should see it appear in the original list.
You can continue to add as many folders as you need. Note that the Spotlight indexer runs periodically and may take some time to reflect your changes.
How Private Are My Files Now?
In short: not very. If someone is using your computer, they can follow a similar process to stop hiding specific folders. They won’t even need to enter a password.
Since Recents is a Smart Folder, it displays its contents dynamically. Results will include files even if you last opened them before updating these settings.
But at least Finder won’t offer up these files every time you open a new window.
Covering Your Recent Tracks With Spotlight Privacy
Although macOS presents this setting under Privacy, files you hide from Recents are private only in the loosest sense. You should think of this feature as a defence against shoulder surfing, and little more. But it can also be useful to keep yourself organized if you use Recents a lot and find the number of files overwhelming.
You should also make sure that you’re still able to locate important files since you won’t be able to find them via search anymore.