How to Remove and Hide “Libraries” Group from Navigation Pane of Windows 7 Explorer

Libraries in Windows Explorer of Windows 7 is taking up a lot of screen estate in the navigation bar. Libraries is implemented in Windows 7 for easy file management and organization purpose. However, existence of Libraries group push down the full Users who don’t use or don’t get used to Libraries for organization may want to disable or hide Libraries altogether.

End users can choose to hide unwanted or unused libraries from view in Windows Explorer navigation pane, or can also almost completely remove and disable Libraries function from Windows 7 Explorer, which involves quite a bit of registry keys. User who just want to hide the Libraries section in navigation pane of Windows Explorer in Windows 7.

In order to hide and remove Libraries group or branch section from Windows 7 Explorer’s navigation pane, follow these steps:

1. Run Registry Editor (RegEdit).
2. Navigate to the following registry key:

   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}\ShellFolder

3. Right click on ShellFolder registry key, and select Permissions.

   

4. Click on the Advanced button.

   

5. In “Advanced Security Settings” dialog window, go to the Owner tab.
6. Select and highlight the currently logged on user name or Administrators group (if user is a member of Administrators” in the Change owner to: box.
7. Select the tick the check box for Replace owner on subcontainers and objects option, and click OK.

   

8. Back in “Permissions” dialog window, click on Add… button.
9. Enter the user’s login user name in the Enter the object names to select text box, and click on the Check Names button.

   

   If there is error with the user ID entered, correct the error. If there is no error found, click the OK button.

10. Back in “Permissions” dialog window, select and highlight the newly added user name in Group or user names: section, and tick the checkbox for Allow access right next to Full Control in the Permissions for <user name> section.

    Note: Read permission is automatically selected when Full Control is granted.

    Click on OK when done.

    

    Tip: If user is a member of Administrators group, it’s possible to grant to Full Control access rights directly to Administrators too, which will be extend to all users with administrator’s privileges.

11. In the right pane of Registry Editor, double click on Attributes registry value.
12. Change the DWORD hexadecimal value data of “Attributes” from “b080010d” to b090010d, and click OK.

    

13. Restart the computer.

The trick above will hide the Libraries from Windows Explorer in Windows 7, as shown in illustration below. However, Windows Explorer is still open to Libraries virtual folder, unless user force Windows Explorer to open another folder as default. Users who want to make use of Libraries can still access the Libraries from \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Libraries folder.

There is also no Libraries tree been shown when revert to class all-folders listed Navigation Pane in Windows 7 Explorer.

An alternative method to make the change is by using registry registration entries file. Simply download the Hide-Libraries-Win7.reg or copy and paste the following code to a text editor such as Notepad, and save it as a file with .reg extension. Run the .REG file to merge the value to registry.

Note: User may require to take full control permissions on the registry key listed in step above before able applying the change.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}\ShellFolder]
"Attributes"=dword:b090010d

To rever and re-display or re-show the Libraries in the navigation pane of Windows 7 Explorer, just change back the value data for Attributes to b080010d, or download Show-Libraries-Win7.reg.

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