Share Folders Icon Overlay

Winodws XP had icon overlays for shared folders which was nice. It let one know just by looking at the directoy if a particular folder had sharing or not. I believe it was a small sharing hand or something in the corner of the icon.

Is there a way with Windows 7 and Directory Opus to have the same behavior? I tried to find "overlay" filter in help and search on the forum but I couldn't find anything.

Windows 7 removed that overlay.

Opus could add it back itself, in theory, but doesn't currently. Might be worth requesting if it's something you want.

Well, I figured out a way to sort of get it to work.

There's a program called "ClassicShell" which has a great "Classic Start Menu" and also a "Classic Explorer"

The Classic Explorer adds a toolbar to Explorer which brings back some of the missing functionality.
Under the Classic Explorer settings/All Settings Checked/File Pane Tab/
Check: Add icon overlay for shared folders
Uncheck: Show overlay only in Explorer (improves performance)

With the second option unchecked, the overlay works properly in Directory Opus.
The only thing is that it doesn't work for Homegroup.

It would be nice if this option was included in Directory Opus with support for Homegroup shared folders as well. I'll put a request in.

Win7, Win8 have a nice addition to the Explorer window to tell if a folder is shared and with whom. Is there an option to do this with DO? I did a search but this was the best I could come up with...


Windows 7 also doesn't have anything like as far as I know, outside of the Properties dialogs. (I don't use Explorer much so maybe I've overlooked something?)

With Windows 8, I'm not sure which part of your screenshot you are referring to.

The list of usernames in the "Share With" ribbon at the top does not seem to be a list of users the folder is shared with (or, if it is, it's broken in my Win 8 install). I'm guessing it's a list of users you might want to share the folder with, not who it is currently shared with. (Or my Win 8 install is broken. :slight_smile:)

The "Shared" indicator at the bottom indicates that the current folder, or a parent of it, is shared (not that the selected folder is shared). (Or it does sometimes, at least. I seem to have broken that now after playing with shares in Win8 for a bit. Heh.) Before it stopped working, I saw that if I hovered over the status bar indicator it would show a tooltip saying who the current folder was shared with. Is that what you meant? (The tooltip wasn't in your screenshot and I had never seen it until I was playing with Windows 8 just now, so I almost missed that it existed.)

Anyway, this is quite an old thread, so it's missing the news that Opus 10 added back the sharing overlays for people on Windows 7 (and above). They are on by default, and can be toggled via Preferences / Miscellaneous / Advanced: win7_show_sharing_overlays. Microsoft took them away, so we gave them back. :slight_smile:

[quote="leo"]
Anyway, this is quite an old thread, so it's missing the news that Opus 10 added back the sharing overlays for people on Windows 7 (and above). They are on by default, and can be toggled via Preferences / Miscellaneous / Advanced: win7_show_sharing_overlays. Microsoft took them away, so we gave them back. :slight_smile:[/quote]
Sorry to butt in here but is there any other setting (within DOpus) that would affect the operation of this setting?

I ask because I have it set to TRUE and do not see any shared overlay on my shared folders icons

Not that I can think of.

Make sure you're looking at the folder which is really shared. e.g. If you use Windows 7's "simple sharing" to share a folder within your user profile folder, it won't actually make the folder you select into a share; instead of shares the C:\Users folder. ("Advanced sharing" shares the actual folder you ask to be shared, on the other hand.)

Yes, folders are properly shared either using Advanced Sharing in the folders properties or by using a button that I have set-up to run net share {file$}={filepath$|noterm} /USERS:2 /GRANT:<my username>,Full
In neither case does the overlay show up. I'm using the latest release (but it hasn't worked for me in any previous release either).

Any further thoughts Leo?

Does anyone else actually see the overlay on their shared drives/folder?


In a word... YES

Regards, AB

OK, so it looks as though it could be some setting either in DOpus or Windows that is causing the problem with my overlays - this could take a while to resolve.

Do you have Preferences / Folders / Folder Display / Show generic icons for turned on?

Hi Jon,

No, I don't have that option turned on but I have found the setting that affects the shared overlay. I turned on Show arrow on shortcut icons under the prefs path you mentioned and the shared overlay has now appeared.

Ah, good find! I forgot that setting even existed.

Might be worth updating the docs to mention that it needs to be turned on as well as the Advanced setting.

So did I :slight_smile:

That option is probably a bit redundant these days; we might look at getting rid of it (we should certainly rename it since it affects more than the shortcut overlay).

Actually, it is mentioned in the docs already under Folder Display. Obviously, I didn't look hard enough but then again as Jon says, the settings needs to be renamed.

Please don't remove my option to get rid of shortcut arrows. I really don't like them and I'm currently using that option :slight_smile: I never noticed the share icon not working since I don't share anything out from my computer. Good to know though.

We'll leave the option in and just correct/clarify its label and the help text.

:thumbsup: