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When pressing the right mouse button on the VLC icon on the taskbar I can no longer delete items from the 'recent files list' and no new entries are added. This happened to me once before, I'd say about two years ago, on my older computer (VLC v3.'something'). I'm running Windows 10 x64 and VLC x64. v3.0.4. Uninstalling it and then reinstalling it doesn't help. How do I fix this?

P.S.
Other applications do not have this problem on my system.

Tools ---> Preferences and in the menu which opens checkmark "Use only one instance when started from the file manager" in the "Playlist and Instances" submenu at the bottom. That will prevent vlc from creating the recent files list.

Tools ---> Preferences and in the menu which opens checkmark "Use only one instance when started from the file manager" in the "Playlist and Instances" submenu at the bottom. That will prevent vlc from creating the recent files list.

I don't want VLC to stop creating the recent files list. I want to be able to delete such items. No new entries are added. The list is static now. Nothing can be added and removed. I enabled the checkmark "Use only one instance when started from the file manager" but it doesn't solve the problem.

As far as I know, it's Windows which is creating and managing these lists. Some similar behavior randomly happens to me with the Windows Explorer recent files list.
I solve it by clearing the Windows search and history.

https://www.howtogeek.com/282281/how-to ... -explorer/
https://www.howtogeek.com/267631/how-to ... indows-10/

As far as I know, it's Windows which is creating and managing these lists. Some similar behavior randomly happens to me with the Windows Explorer recent files list.
I solve it by clearing the Windows search and history.

If Lotesdelere is right about that, there's a menu you can use to clear the list, or to allow say three items. It's the Windows Jumplists and you can access it by right clicking the Windows taskbar and go to Properties. Click the Jumplists tab and then set the number of entries you want in the menu top right. Here's a screenshot.



(click to enlarge).

I don't use the jumplists at all which is why the boxes are blank, but the default is to have them checkmarked.

How come I right click on a file to deleate it but now a thin Rectangular box with tiny errors in it shows up and I cannot click and the arrows to delete the file I don’t know why this started happening on its own

Ok I clicked on a movie file draged it to recycle bin that got rid of it

Nothing worked so far. This really looks like it is a VLC specific problem. I also deleted the file "f01b4d95cf55d32a" in the folder %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

This should delete the entire jumplist for VLC. I checked the file by opening it up with Notepad. I verified it was the VLC jumplist. Didn't work.

I got rid of the 64-bit version, cleaned up after uninstallation and then installed the 32-bit variant. Jumplists works. Probably because it has different registry strings in the Windows registry. So I would consider this to be a workaround, not a fix.

For me the answer was found in this windows folder:

like the date was not matching the today file. renaming it .bak remove the undelete files in vlc taskbar left click menu.

then it did clear that list and create the new entry.

but the files is not the jumplist specific to VLC but to ALL APPS and was outdated

LOOK INTO %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations for OLD files (after propably turn on and off jumplist in windows main menu)