Remove Green Check Mark Icon Overlay: Dropbox, SkyDrive, & Others

Online file hosting and synchronizing services like Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, and others indicate synced files and folders by overlaying them with a green check (tick) mark icon.

Since none of the big services (except SugarSync) allow users to pick folders outside their own to sync, the check mark might not be that useful for many. If you feel the same, or if you are just annoyed with the green ticks, here’s a quick registry hack to remove those overlay icons from your files and folders.

1. Open Windows Registry Editor (Win + R > type in regedit > hit Enter).
2. Then go to:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

3. Under ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers key you will find keys of Dropbox, SkyDrive, and any other service that you may have installed on your computer.



4. Now for Dropbox, simply rename the key ‘DropboxExt1‘ to something like ‘DropboxExt1-D‘, for SkyDrive rename ‘SkyDrive1‘ to ‘SkyDrive1-D‘, or anything else you like so that windows cannot find the key value in the registry. Do the same for other services you want.
5. Once done, restart your computer, or restart explorer using Task Manager.

That’s it. You won’t find any more overlay icons on your synced files. To get the icons back, remove the text that you appended on the key(s).

Instead of renaming you could also delete those keys. However do remember to back them up before doing so. To back up, right-click on the appropriate key and choose Export. To later restore, simply double-click on the exported ‘.reg’ file and merge it to your Registry once again.