You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Some people deal with confidential files and use Dropbox for these. It would be very useful to allow people the option to clear their "Recent" files at will to allow more privacy and discretion.
I don’t understand why DropBox, Google, etc. hasn’t addressed the invasive issue that is the “Recent” feature.
For personal accounts, there are times where you don’t want to be reminded you looked at something.
Not long ago, when my Dad passed away, I spent an evening looking at photos. The next day, when I opened my app, I wanted to look at the last thing I worked on. I didn’t want or need to look at the last 10 photos of my Dad. It was painful, and frustrating. I should have been able to easily clear my history. Instead I spent half an hour opening up random files.
DropBox, Recent files is a productivity feature that deserves curation options. If my life is on DropBox, everything I look at is recent. It stops being useful and can become painful. Recent files should function only on folders I choose. This isn’t some random nice to have, it’s truly important, for practical and emotional reasons it’s important.
Thank you for reading this,
Spencer M.
For personal accounts, there are times where you don’t want to be reminded you looked at something.
Not long ago, when my Dad passed away, I spent an evening looking at photos. The next day, when I opened my app, I wanted to look at the last thing I worked on. I didn’t want or need to look at the last 10 photos of my Dad. It was painful, and frustrating. I should have been able to easily clear my history. Instead I spent half an hour opening up random files.
DropBox, Recent files is a productivity feature that deserves curation options. If my life is on DropBox, everything I look at is recent. It stops being useful and can become painful. Recent files should function only on folders I choose. This isn’t some random nice to have, it’s truly important, for practical and emotional reasons it’s important.
Thank you for reading this,
Spencer M.
Fiona
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi Spencer.
I am sorry for your loss and any frustration caused.
We appreciate your feedback. Others have reported it would be useful to have a way to hide or clear history in the recent section. Below I've attached a direct link to help you upvote this idea about recents:
"Clear History" button for "Recents".
Thank you!
Yeah, this is waaaaay to invasive for me. In my opinion it's stupid that it can't be turned off, and insane that it can't even be cleared. It's also a feature I've *never* used on any platform/service including DropBox, Windows Explorer (both home and at the office), mac OS, and Microsoft Office. In the very rare instances where I need to regularly access a file over along period of time I'll either pin it or make a shortcut.
I'm going to be canceling my subscription once I find a service that at a minimum allows me to clear viewed file history.
It truly is a disappointment that this issue still exists. I am currently looking into options to replace DropBox for my entire corporation, and abandon it completely.
F.Y.I.: I know of two other, much larger corporations, that are preparing to do the same thing (abandon DropBox), for the very same reason. You should listen to your PAYING customers... We do NOT want this feature forced upon us. We want the ability to CLEAR IT whenever we want, AND the ability to disable it in such a way that it no longer tracks activity unless we tell it to start again (with no record of any activity before we tell it to start again).
I'd also love the ability to manage this at the file level. I know the ones I wouldn't like to see in the recents section and the ones that I don't mind seeing there. It would be amazing if I could set up a file as being excluded from inclusion in the feature. Then I wouldn't have to constantly go through and manually remove stuff.
Thanks,
Jake
Hi, still unable to clear the list of recent items on the web UI. Still want this feature. Clicking the 'Hide' button doesn't cut it. Still creepy. Please add this feature. Thanks!
