Said this in the privacy forum as well, but I’m honestly flabbergasted that there’s no way to remove items from the “recents” tab of the files app without outright deleting them from your phone entirely. And the “recents” tab in the preview app shamelessly displays files previewed from apps and directories marked as hidden.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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Ya I had like 20gb of porn in the files app hidden in folders so that it wouldn't easily show up if the files app was open. Then I went to recents when looking for a PDF at the doctor's office and BAM! lots of porn.
I hope they fix that somehow.
In the meantime, put all your files in a folder, compress it to a zip file, then delete the original file. Any time you want to view your stuff, you’ll have to unzip it, then delete the folder afterwards. That seems to remove all trace from your recents.
gosh that's so tedious. do they not care about gooners at Apple???