How to stop a program from adding a Quick access shortcut?

wgp said:

A temporary help is to move the GDFS link to the top of your list so it's out of the way. It will reappear at the bottom after some time though. I'd really like to know how to remove it permanently too.

You do so by disabling Quick LIsts all together with the information in Post #5.

wgp said:

We don't want to remove Quick access altogether. We just don't want Google Drive to add it's shortcut to Quick access when PC boots up.

Hello wgp,

You might see if this below may work for you by adding Google Drive to the navigation pane in File Explorer.

Add or Remove Google Drive from Navigation Pane in Windows 10

You can remove anything from Quick Access.

Hide Specific File or Folder from Quick Access in Windows 10

wgp said:

We don't want to remove Quick access altogether. We just don't want Google Drive to add it's shortcut to Quick access when PC boots up.

You cannot have it that way. The only way is to disable the Quick Access Links which serve zero purpose to begin with. There is no way to stop a program from adding to Quick Access, when it is coded into the installer of the program.

Google Drive Quick Access has zero to do with Windows Quick Access and Brink has provided the link for the later.

Google Drive File Stream adds automatically at every restart of the application a pinned shortcut under Quick Access. This has nothing to do with frequency of use of that shortcut. Nothing, zero, at all. It just happens each and every time you launch Google Drive File Stream (either at system startup or manually if the app had been closed during a session, for whatever reason).

As such, there is nothing one can achieve through regular Windows settings handling Quick Access.

Google Drive File Stream modifies this file:

C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\f01b4d95cf55d32a.automaticDestinatio ns-ms

And it does this under its process, with the credentials of the user in the session. Checked this by enabling auditing for the above file.

I have "solved" this by removing the pinned shortcut and then denying permissions to my account for that specific file. If you need to manually edit the Quick Access list, you can regain ownership of the file and act accordingly. But I rarely modify that list and this is a solution for me.

I don't know under what user the "automatic population" of that list happens, as I don't have the function activated and I have zero interest in it. For me it's a handy list of locations *I* choose. I suppose it probably uses the SYSTEM account but if you are interested in it, well... check what happens.

- - - Updated - - -

Edit, to the above:

Unfortunately after a while Quick access entry in the Explorer Windows emptied itself. Don't know how and why this happens. For a while everything was fine, I used my PC normally. Then I noticed that the Quick access entries had all disappeared. Restoring access to my account, closing and restarting Drive File Stream, restored the full list, as it was configured before.

So we're back at square one. I start suspecting that there's no way unless Google changes its application's behavior.
I'll try allowing permissions to Read and Read and Execute an I'll report back (before I denied everything).

Edit 2: with Read and Read and Execute permissions it appears to preserve the existing shortcuts in Quick access. If I need to add shortcuts I need to give myself write/modify privileges to the above file. I'll report back after a longer time to see if this behavior is mantained.