Preferences / Common / Session / Remember open files for next project launch.
This box now has to be ticked for Kicad 7.0.0-rc to remember to show a current project in the Project Files column. From memory, Kicad 6.x.x and 6.99 automatically did this without ticking that box.
Is this a Kicad change or is my memory failing yet again?
This is the dialog from V7.0.0-rc1:
The checkbox you mention was off (and I don’t remember changing it), but according to the tooltip text it does something differently…
Tooltips are the same, but there are some small other differences.
Anyway, from what I gather, the checkbox is for remembering postions of windows of the different kicad parts from within a single project. Not for the list of Recent Projects.
I installed 7.0.0-rc a few days ago, and every time I opened it, the Project Files column was blank; I had to go and find my test project from D drive.
This morning, after answering another thread with the same problem, I found the preference, ticked the box, and now, whether ticked or unticked, the Project File retains the last opened project information.
I’ll do some experimenting… download todays nightly and perhaps delete 7 and reinstall to see if the same problem occurs.
Deleting and reinstalling V7 probably does not change anything. On my linux box the whole KiCad thing is read-only, and as far as I know KiCad can’t even write to it’s own directory.
It’s more likely it’s in the settings somewhere, and my usual option is to rename the whole settings directory. Kicad then thinks it’s started for the first time and re-initalises the default settings. When you rename the settings, you can put them back, and you can also compare changes with a program like Meld Merge.