Hide “Recent” from SharePoint 2013 Quick Launch Navigation

The recent section gets added automatically through a Web Control on SharePoint pages. ‘Recent’ menu is individual to each user! Meaning everyone gets their own recent section with links to their recent activities! If you have a requirement to remove (or hide) the “Recent” menu header from the left navigation of SharePoint 2013, Here are some solutions:

sharepoint 2013 hide recent in quick launch

In Publishing sites, You can remove the “Recent” section manually by going to Site Settings >> Look and Feel >> Navigation (or Quick launch on Non-publishing sites!).

hide recent in sharepoint 2013

How to hide recent in SharePoint 2013 using jQuery?

Edit the page, Add a script editor web part, and place this code in it (or master page HTML)

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
  jQuery(".ms-core-listMenu-item:contains('Recent')").parent().hide();
});
</script>

Hide “Recent” heading in SharePoint 2013 Quick launch with PowerShell:

You can also remove the “Recent” section using PowerShell by deleting the recent header.

PowerShell script to delete recent group in SharePoint 2013 left navigation:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

$web = Get-SPWeb "https://your-sharepoint-site-url"

#Process Quick launch
for ($i = $web.Navigation.QuickLaunch.Count-1; $i -ge 0; $i--)
{
    $node = $web.Navigation.QuickLaunch[$i];

    if($node.Title -eq "Recent")
        {
            $node.Delete();
            Write-host "Recent section removed from $($web.Title)"
        }
}
You can restrict “Recent” menu by Creating a SharePoint group, Configure the audience targeting on the menu item only to the group!

Salaudeen Rajack

Salaudeen Rajack - Information Technology Expert with Two-decades of hands-on experience, specializing in SharePoint, PowerShell, Microsoft 365, and related products. He has held various positions including SharePoint Architect, Administrator, Developer and consultant, has helped many organizations to implement and optimize SharePoint solutions. Known for his deep technical expertise, He's passionate about sharing the knowledge and insights to help others, through the real-world articles!

7 thoughts on “Hide “Recent” from SharePoint 2013 Quick Launch Navigation

  • You can also remove the “Recent” section using Javascript by deleting the recent header.
    ->
    var all = document.querySelectorAll(“.ms-core-listMenu-item”) ;for(var i = 0; i -1){ all[i].parentNode.style.display = ‘none’;}}

    Reply
  • How do you display “Recent” on left navigation if you deleted? Create new header in navigation?

    Reply
  • I used audience targeting to hide the Recent node. I created PowerShell script to create the nodes in all sub-sites if it did not already exist and applied audience targeting. This seemed to work fine but then when I added a new document library to the site, SharePoint automatically added another Recent node besides the audience targeted Recent node. Any ideas?

    Reply
  • Finally! Instructions for using jQuery that were simple to follow and actually work. Thank you!

    Reply

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