30

Since Windows can only handle 15 icon overlay identifiers and the rest get ignored I though I can move the ones I want to the top and only have the ones I need.

In terms of Tortoise SVN it's very easy to find out which icons you're ruling out since the names are relevant. Say, I know the name 1TortoiseModified is relevant with the following overlay:

enter image description here

However, the Dropbox overlay are called "DropboxEx1", "DropboxExt2" and so on. We got 8 of them and I wanted to know which ones are relevant to which ones then I make sure I am not ignoring the important ones with this renaming strategy I've adopted.

enter image description here

Obviously the ones after 333SharingPrivate are going to be ignored since they already hit the 15 mark.

Dave M
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Mehrad
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6 Answers6

36

I went through and enabled/disabled each Dropbox Shell Icon Overlays and found the following results below on Windows 7 x64 and Dropbox 2.10.30.

The 8 icon overlays are as follows:

| Icon Overlay | Color (Icon) | Status                                    |
| ------------ | ------------ | ----------------------------------------- |
| DropboxExt1  | Green        | Synced!                                   |
| DropboxExt2  | Blue         | Sync in progress                          |
| DropboxExt3  | Green (lock) | Synced! (locked file)                     |
| DropboxExt4  | Blue (lock)  | Sync in progress (locked file)            |
| DropboxExt5  | Red          | Sync not happening                        |
| DropboxExt6  | Red (lock)   | Sync not happening (locked file)          |
| DropboxExt7  | Gray         | A file/folder isn't syncing               |
| DropboxExt8  | Gray (lock)  | A file/folder isn't syncing (locked file) |

There are not separate overlays for files and folders. Disabling one of the overlays above will affect both. The 4 primary status icons described in this Dropbox help doc are 1, 2, 5, and 7. Overlays 3, 4, 6 and 8 are duplicates of the primary 4, but for locked files. (Thanks BeingInquisitive)

NirSoft's ShellExView is a handy tool to enable/disable Shell Icon Overlays without needing to mess around in the registry. Windows will apply the first 15 Enabled overlays.

If you prefer the manual approach, you can still rename or delete the entries under 

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

Note: For either approach you have to kill/restart the explorer.exe process(es) for the changes to take effect.

Danny A
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  • 3
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8

The main icons are as Danny A say. The others are pairs of the main ones for locked files. The full list is:

  1. Synced! - (green)
  2. Sync in progress (blue)
  3. Locked: Synced! (green + lock)
  4. Locked: Sync in progress (blue + lock)
  5. Sync not happening (red X)
  6. Locked: Sync not happening (red X + Lock)
  7. A file or folder isn't syncing (gray minus)
  8. Locked: A file or folder isn't syncing (gray minus + Lock)
BeingQuisitive
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5

I have installed Dropbox, OneDrive and GoogleDrive. Overlay icons for all three applications were not working fine. Some icons were not showing. I was interested to show at least two icons for all three applications. Because these icons are most common.

  1. Synced! - (green)
  2. Sync in progress (blue)

So I changed my registry settings so that at least these two icons should work. To achieve this I have changed the order of overlay icons in registry.

I have made changes in following registry key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > CurrentVersion > Explorer > ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

enter image description here

5

The Top-Rated response was from 2014, and now it is 2019. Nearly five years later, we have 10 icon overlays now, up from 8 back in 2014.

The latest 2019 shell icon overlay descriptions are listed below: (See Photo)

enter image description here

The information in the photo above is correct as of Jun 26, 2019, verified with DropBox Advanced Support team via email inquiry. For continuous updated version, please see the Wikipedia page for a List of Icon Shell Overlays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shell_Icon_Overlay_Identifiers

FYI: I also want to correct a misconception, there is 15 icon overlays alloted, but effectively only 11 icons available for other programs, because Windows System reserves 4 for itself. (15-4=11) according to official Microsoft support website. (archive URL) So only the first 11 icons ordered are listed, the rest are ignored.

rwat128
  • 339
3

DropboxExt1 - 4 are relevant to show the status of the folders and files (OK or in-sync mode). 5 - 8 show a red icon to show an error. I disabled 5-8, by deleting them from the registry and this works fine for me.

enter image description here

Mehrad
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magicandre1981
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1

from https://www.garethjmsaunders.co.uk/2015/03/22/managing-overlay-icons-for-dropbox-and-tortoisesvn-and-tortoisegit/#comment-277952

There is an even more permanent solution to this problem:

– go to the registry key ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers
– right click > Permissions… > Advanced
– now disable inheritance, take ownership of this key and check “Replace all child permission..”
– Once you are the owner of the key you can permanently remove OneDrive / Dropbox or whatever keys you do not need.
– to secure this key from future edits make it read-only for the SYSTEM user.

CAD bloke
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