How do I clear recent projects

I think trashing the preferences is a moronic way to clear the recent project list. Why wash dishes when I can throw them away?

Where is the trash/delete preference in an open premiere pro project?

I'm a new user of Prem Pro + thanks for helpful suggestion,

1. Close prem pro.

2. Press Shift+Alt, while opening Prem Pro.

All recent cleared!

I've been having pretty much the same problem... But! with Adobe After Effects.

The screen that's displayed when After Effects first opens (I'm guessing that's called the splash screen) correctly removes any of my old project files that I've deleted. However, the "Open Recent" list within the file menu doesn't remove them. If I select any of the deleted project file names from the "Open Recent" file menu option list, then not surprisingly it says it cannot locate the file. Now you might hope that'd remove it from the list... but it doesn't!

Anyway the solution similar to as mentioned is to simply edit the: "Adobe After Effects 22.2 Prefs" text file. Note: After Effects must be closed when editing the text file or else it can repopulate the file, which must happen either during or when closing After Effects.

I've attached a screenshot that shows the file location and which lines to delete = 3 lines per project file.

WOW. Imagine you wrote a big blog in MS Word and in order to clear it from your recent file list you have to delete the file.  How backward can Adobe be. Honestly, they need to understand their customers better. 

From creative cloud, press Optn (Mac) or Alt (Win) and click on Open Premiere Pro. That will prompt you to clear your preferences. If you do, your recent projects will be gone from your welcome window. Here's the link with a video to the Adobe site: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/reset-preferences.html

do you realize that you can just double click on a premiere project and that will launch premiere pro and load that project?  Although the premiere "splash" screen is useful cause it shows the recent projects you've opened, it's not necesarily the best way for your workflow.   I've got a folder for my premiere pro projects that's automatically mirrored on my dropbox account.  All I have to do is find the project I want to load and double click on it.

This is an old post, but there still doesn't seem to be any way to flush your recent projects list. The answers provided so far are to either move all your old projects or completely trash your preferences. If you would rather not make arbitrary file changes or completely annihilate all of your application preferences for such a simple and otherwise-commonplace task (really? who thinks this is an acceptable answer?), and you're comfortable editing an XML file, you can remove the MRU (Most-Recently-Used) items by editing the preferences file manually, as follows:

1. Quit Premiere Pro, if it's still running.
2. Locate your preferences file, named "~/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/version/Profile-username/Adobe Premiere Pro Prefs}}", where "~" is your home folder and version and username are the application version and your computer user name, respectively.
3. Make a backup copy of this file and put it somewhere out of the way, e.g. your desktop.
4. Open the original preferences file in a text editor
5. Locate and remove every XML element whose name starts with "BE.Prefs.MRU.". These should all be of the form "<BE.Prefs.MRU.Document.attribute.number>value</BE.Prefs.MRU.Document.attribute.number>". Note that elements may not all be together or in order – use your editor's "find" command to ensure you've removed all of them from the file. Make sure you do not make any other changes to the file contents!
6. Save the file
7. Launch Premiere Pro. Your home screen should not show any recent project items.
8. If the application fails to launch, or you notice any unexpected behavior, you can revert to the original file by replacing it with the backup copy from step 3.

Before trashing preferences or deleting project files try this.  Just MOVE the projects you'd like to hide from the list.   I noticed if you drag completed projects into a subfolder or just elsewhere, those projects then do not show up in the list on the home screen the next time you open PremierePro CC.

(i'm using PPro CC 2019 on OS X)

Starting premiere pro wit Alt-Shift. the list is cleared