How to Show Only Quick Access in the Navigation Pane in Windows 10

We saw how to remove Quick access and other Shell Folders from File Explorer in one of my previous articles. This post something similar. In this, I’ll tell you how to remove all Pinned items in the navigation pane except Quick access.

Hide or Remove All Shell Folders but Quick Access

Download w10-hide-all-navpane.zip, unzip and run the w10-hide-all-navpane.reg. This hides all other pinned shell folders, and shows only the Quick access. To reverse the changes, run w10-show-all-navpane.reg.

Here it goes!

More Information

Here is what the registry file does.

Under this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID

The following sub keys are created:

  1. {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
  2. {B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}
  3. {018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6}
  4. {F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}
  5. {031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}

For each of the sub keys above, the following DWORD (32 bit) value is created in the right pane:

"System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree" and its value data set to dword:00000000



For Reference

GUID Shell Item name
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} This PC
{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93} Homegroup
{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6} OneDrive
{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C} Network
{031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5} Libraries

System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree value determines whether the shell folder is pinned on to the navigation or not. Setting them to 1 pins the item, and 0 unpins them. This doesn’t seem to work for Homegroup though, hence the additional step below.

Additional Step – For Homegroup

The REG file also deletes the {B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93} sub key under these Namespace keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace

This removes or unpins OneDrive, This PC, Libraries, Network and Homegroup from the navigation pane. Note that the changes are seen not only in This PC, but also in Browse dialog boxes in various applications.


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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

2 thoughts on “How to Show Only Quick Access in the Navigation Pane in Windows 10”

  1. Great! But still leaves Deskop in my nav pane. This is Deskop:
    Desktop (folder) ::{B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641}

    This doesn’t work:
    “System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree”=dword:00000000

    Any fix?

    Also, you don’t say whether to run as Admin or as current user (which might not be admin).

    thx!

    Reply

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