Stop Finder opening to Recents on Mac

Recents is what a new Finder window shows by default, and it trips people up because it looks like a folder but doesn't behave like one. If you're tired of landing in a list you can't organise, switch the default in Finder Settings — Home, Documents, or any folder makes a saner starting point.

What Recents actually is

Recents isn't a location on your disk. It's a smart search that gathers files you've opened lately from everywhere — your Documents, your Downloads, an external drive, a network share — and lists them newest first. Nothing physically lives "in" Recents; the entries are shortcuts back to wherever each file really sits.

That design causes the friction people notice: you can't reliably drag a new file into Recents to file it, the contents reorder themselves as you work, and it happily shows documents you'd rather not have on screen in a meeting. As a jog to your memory it's fine. As the place every window opens to, it fights you.

Switch to a real folder

1. Click the desktop or any Finder window so Finder is active, then choose Finder → Settings (older systems say Preferences).
2. On the General tab, open New Finder windows show — it currently reads Recents.
3. Choose a real folder instead: Home for a general hub, Documents if that's where your work lives, or Other… to browse to any folder.

Press Cmd-N to confirm — the new window opens to your chosen folder, not Recents. The setting works the same across macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

The Terminal route

You can flip the default from the command line. Here it points new windows at Home (PfHm); swap in PfDe for Desktop or PfCm for the Computer level.

# Send new Finder windows to Home instead of Recents
defaults write com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget -string "PfHm"
killall Finder

# Undo — go back to Recents (the default)
defaults delete com.apple.finder NewWindowTarget
killall Finder

The killall Finder restart applies the change at once. To reinstate Recents later, run the delete command — it clears the custom value and Finder falls back to its default.

Hide Recents from the sidebar too

Changing the default stops new windows opening to Recents, but the Recents entry still sits in the Finder sidebar. If you never want to land there by accident, remove it:

1. With Finder active, choose Finder → Settings and click the Sidebar tab.
2. Under Favorites, untick Recents.

The entry disappears from every Finder window's sidebar, and re-ticking it brings it straight back — nothing is deleted, since Recents was only ever a saved search. Pair this with the new-window change and Recents is effectively out of your way: it won't open on its own, and it won't tempt a stray click from the sidebar. You can still reach a recent file through the app that made it, or from the Apple menu's Recent Items, whenever you actually want one.

With both changes in place, Recents stops being something that happens to you and becomes something you open on purpose, if at all. That's the healthier relationship with it — a tool you reach for deliberately when you want a recent file, not a default that greets every new window with a shuffling list you never asked for.

Recents is still there when you want it

Switching the default doesn't remove Recents — it stays in the Finder sidebar for the times a "what did I just open" list helps. To learn what it collects and how to tidy it, read how the Recents folder works on Mac.