Customize Explorer Navigation Pane

[Cmdr-Keene]

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

I would like a PowerToy that allows the user to easily customize which root items appear in the File Explorer Navigation pane.

For example, currently I use registry edits like this to remove the "Network" section and add "Recycle Bin" to the navigation pane. I imagine a tool that allows a user to selection which items show up in that area.

Perhaps a dialog that allows a user to check/uncheck which of the default items are visible, or add their own folders there. Perhaps they could optionally choose if the item allows for expanding to view subfolders or behaves more like a shortcut (like quick access items do). A user could even pin any arbitrary folder (similar to the old "explorer from here as root" tool from years past) so they could have quick access to that folder/sufolders.

Here's a very rough mockup of what it might look like:

Crutkas: From https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/1984 as well It would be super useful to be able to tweak File Explorer to be more useful in the scene that we have shortcuts that are relevate for me.

For me personally, i don't need "3D Objects" but it would be sweet if I had my Source\Repos folder ("C:\Users\crutkas\source\repos")

[crutkas]

love this idea

[Cmdr-Keene]

@ryanbodrug-microsoft was this supposed to close this issue?

[ryanbodrug-microsoft]

@ryanbodrug-microsoft was this supposed to close this issue?

Nope. merged changed into master that came from a different repo, and github automatically seems to have picked up the comments. Thanks for the heads up. I'll reopen.

[Cmdr-Keene]

1984 is about the this PC folder, but this particular one, 975, is about the navigation pane namespace tree.

[crutkas]

xref #1984 as chances are they are related

[Jay-o-Way]

WinAero Tweaker has exactly this.

[Cmdr-Keene]

WinAero Tweaker has exactly this.

It doesn't provide options to configure almost anything that appears in my navigation pane. Just "Network" and my personal OneDrive. I would prefer to remove the organizational roots here (since there's only one folder inside each of them, they would be better as pins in my QuickAccess anyway. Today I accomplish this by finding them in the registry and changing the "isPinnedToNameSpaceTree" value to zero. I also edit the registry to disable the external drives (I don't need my backup drive appearing here in the left nav), and I prefer to put the Recycle Bin there and then hide it from the desktop (the later is available as a GUI option in Windows' desktop icon settings).

One issue is that every new build resets these settings, as does reluanching OneDrive. Which probably means that even if there was a GUI (maybe "Tweak UI"... I can dream!) to edit these registry values, that later one would require OneDrive to provide options themselves. I may try changing the OneDrive roots back to isPinnedToNameSpaceTree=0 and then changing the registry hive permissions to prevent if from being changed again.

In general I just find the left nav here to be crowded with unnecessary clutter and wish it was more customizable. I'd switch to the old desktop-rooted hierarchy view but that's even worse because then a ton of desktop and control panel applets show up in the tree for no good reason. It's almost as awful as having all my user shell folders show up at the root of "This PC" (even though all those folders are known-folder-moved to be inside OneDrive and thus, duplicates again).

[alexwhittemore]

Consider this an upvote I guess. WinAero tweaker actually seems more useful to me than it is for @LtCmdrKeene but it's still lacking the ability to remove items it didn't put there, for the most part. For instance, I use Synology Drive and for some reason I have two entries from that in my pane, when neither of them are actually useful. WinAero Tweaker gives me the option to remove one of my two OneDrive entries and that's kinda it.

[Cmdr-Keene]

I’m happy to see that Windows 11 has more options to remove a few top level items like Network and This PC. Which, because it’s full of redundant local folders (which are already in my OneDrive too), I nearly never use and am happy to reach using favorites/quick access or just the > icon in the address bar.

[Convincible]

Yes please