How to Remove Shortcut Arrow on Icons in Windows (Include Desktop Items)
All shortcut icons in Windows operating system, including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, has a small arrow overlay on the icons. The arrow is used to different between a shortcut from an actual physical file itself. The shortcut arrow is presented on all desktop icons, and icons in Windows Explorer, and it can be easily remove or hide.
How to Hide and Remove Shortcut Arrow from Desktop Icons and Other Icons
- Run Registry Editor (RegEdit).
- Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile
- Delete the IsShortcut registry value in the right pane.
Tip: It’s also workable to just rename the IsShortcut registry entry to another name, such as IsNotShortcut.
- Some other type of documents and files may be shortcut arrow on their icons too. To remove the shortcut arrow overlay image on these icons, navigate to each of the following registry keys, and then repeat step 2 and step 3 above to deactivate the shortcut arrow:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\piffile
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ConferenceLink
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DocShortCut
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\InternetShortcut
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WSHFile - Exit from Registry Editor.
- Logout and login again or restart Explorer for the change to take effect.
Note that removing the shortcut arrow with hack
Note : Please note that in some cases deactivating the arrow for *.LNK files might lead to duplicate items in the Explorer context menu, as in essence, removing the “IsShortcut” effectively forces Windows to treat the shortcut as real hard file. In Windows 7, it may also cause error such as unable to pin shortcut to Taskbar or Start Menu. To avoid these issue, use another workaround to remove shortcut arrow.
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Entries (RSS)
September 26th, 2009 00:03
It worked like a charm…at first. After the 2nd reboot after the fix, the arrows came back on any webpage shortcuts. I went back to RegEdit and the IsShortcut registry value is still deleted in all 6 keys. Any ideas?
August 20th, 2009 18:32
This is not a very good method as it will break certain shortcuts in Start menu, for example, right click Computer and the Manage option will no longer work.
Better to use a tool like FxVisor.
June 26th, 2009 05:58
Same here browner, i used the same icon for making invisible desktop icons, they just turned black…
April 18th, 2009 20:39
The HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile is not there! Kindly give an alternative method to remove arrow marks on desktop icons
March 19th, 2009 23:50
Is there a way to undo this? It just made black squares where the overlay arrows used to be. Thanks in advance.
January 17th, 2009 11:01
Great, thanks.
January 17th, 2009 04:08
[...] problem is because users have made the shortcut in Windows 7 to be ‘not a shortcut’ by removing the shortcut arrow on icons (including desktop icons) by removing IsShortcut registry [...]