A local Windows utility that keeps a searchable history of the folders you open in Windows Explorer (and, opt-in, Q-Dir), so you can find and re-visit them later — like browser history, but for folders.
This is not GPS or geographic location tracking. "Location" here means file-system paths (folders), not physical places. All data stays on your PC.
Windows Explorer doesn't keep a searchable history of the folders you've opened. If you regularly jump between many project folders, network shares, or deeply nested paths, it's easy to lose track of where something was.
Location History records the folders you have open in Explorer (and, opt-in, in Q-Dir — a third-party file manager) when you run a capture, stores them locally, and gives you a searchable history plus a curated list of folders you've explicitly saved ("Places") so you can get back to them quickly.
Searching the recorded history (all paths shown are placeholder demo data):
Browsing recorded folders as a tree, with saved and pinned Places marked:
Built out of daily frustration with re-navigating the same deep folder trees repeatedly, without a lightweight way to jump back to "that folder from earlier" or keep a short list of frequently-used locations across sessions.
Current public release: v0.1.0 (stable). It has been developed and tested on a limited set of Windows environments (including business-PC / RDP-style setups); see Limitations before relying on it.
- History: records the folders open in Explorer (and, opt-in, Q-Dir) each time you run a capture
- Places: pin folders you want to keep easy access to, independent of recent history
- Tree view: browse recorded folders in a hierarchical view
- Search: filter history and places by path or name
- Undo / Redo: for pin/unpin and other list operations
- Bulk operations: multi-select pin/unpin and cleanup
- GUI (
location-history-gui.exe) is the primary, recommended way to use this tool — this is what most day-to-day use looks like: browsing, searching, and pinning folders. - CLI (
location-history.exe) provides diagnostics, maintenance, and advanced/scripted operations (e.g.diagnose-history,history-delete,migrate-favorites). Most users won't need it for normal use.
- Download
location-history-v0.1.0-windows.zipfrom the latest release. - Extract it anywhere.
- Run
location-history-gui.exe.
Windows may display a Microsoft Defender SmartScreen warning when launching the application. Confirm that you downloaded the file from this official GitHub release before proceeding.
No installer, no admin rights required. The app is portable — it can be run from any folder.
- Launch
location-history-gui.exe. - With the folders you care about open in Explorer, click Capture, review the list, and apply it to add them to history. See How capture works.
- Open the app's History or Tree view to search and re-open past folders.
- Pin folders you want to keep as Places for quick access later.
Capturing folder visits is an explicit step, not a background service:
- In the GUI: click Capture to scan the folders currently open in Explorer, review the list, and apply it. Q-Dir is captured only if you opt in on the capture screen (this briefly opens a temporary Q-Dir clone window to read its tabs).
- From the CLI:
location-history.exe capture(Explorer) orlocation-history.exe capture-qdir(Q-Dir). - Optional periodic capture: run the tray helper (
location-history.exe tray) and choose Start Periodic Capture to capture Explorer folders automatically on a timer (default: every 5 minutes). This is Explorer-only and stays off until you start it.
Capture is not a real-time watcher. It records the folders open at capture time, so a folder you open and close between captures is not recorded.
Folder visits are captured from:
- Windows Explorer windows
- Q-Dir (a third-party multi-pane file manager), when you opt in on the capture screen (or use the
capture-qdirCLI command) and Q-Dir is installed and running
No other applications are monitored.
All data is stored locally under %LOCALAPPDATA%\location-history\:
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
history.jsonl |
Recorded folder-visit history |
marks.json |
Pinned/saved Places |
view_state.json |
UI state (window layout, last view, etc.) |
Nothing is stored anywhere else on the system, and nothing is sent off the device.
- All processing is local and offline. There is no network communication of any kind — no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no update checks, no cloud sync.
- Your folder-visit history and pinned Places are stored only in the local files listed above.
- This history can reveal working patterns and project names, so treat exported or copied history/marks files as personal data — the same way you'd treat browser history.
- Windows only (uses Windows-specific APIs for window/process interaction).
- Developed and tested on a Windows PC, including business-PC/RDP-style environments.
- Other Windows versions/configurations are not independently verified.
- Capture is manual by default and is not a real-time watcher; short-lived folder visits between captures are missed. Automatic capture is available only through the opt-in tray periodic mode (Explorer-only, default 5-minute interval).
- Q-Dir capture is an opt-in step on the capture screen (or the
capture-qdirCLI command) and requires Q-Dir to be installed and running; it is not part of periodic capture. Without Q-Dir, only Explorer is captured. - History and Places are local to the PC they're recorded on — there is no sync between machines.
- Renamed, moved, or deleted folders are not detected — the recorded entry just goes stale and opening it will fail.
- This is a personal-use tool that has grown organically; some advanced CLI commands are diagnostic/maintenance-oriented rather than polished end-user features.
I'm trying to work out whether persistent folder-navigation history is actually useful in real workflows, which file managers beyond Explorer and Q-Dir are worth supporting, and how stale paths (renamed, moved, or deleted folders) should be handled.
If you have thoughts on any of that, see the feedback discussion.
Requires a Rust toolchain (stable) on Windows.
# Build both binaries in release mode
cargo build --release
# Run tests
cargo testRelease binaries are produced at target\release\location-history.exe and target\release\location-history-gui.exe.
The GUI uses the canonical assets/location-history.png image for its native
window icon. On Windows, build.rs embeds the matching multi-size
assets/location-history.ico into location-history-gui.exe so Explorer and
taskbar-pinned shortcuts can use the same icon.
Rust's default release build embeds source-file paths (including your local cargo registry cache path) into panic-location strings inside the binary. If you're building a binary for distribution rather than local use, remap those paths first so they aren't shipped:
$env:RUSTFLAGS = "--remap-path-prefix=$env:CARGO_HOME=/cargo --remap-path-prefix=$PWD=/location-history"
cargo build --release