Which Dropbox icon is for which Icon Overlay Identifier name?

26

11

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.

Mehrad

Posted 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Reputation: 508

I removed dropbboxext 5-8, they are new in 2.11 and only show a red X. – magicandre1981 – 2014-09-10T04:16:23.647

it's good to know that they are useless. Or better way to say, less of a use if there are more important things to show. But any idea what are the 1-4 are for? – Mehrad – 2014-09-10T04:22:47.500

1-4 show the normal sync status (file is ok or syncing) – magicandre1981 – 2014-09-10T04:24:40.490

Oh. Is there one for a file ok and one other for folder ok? – Mehrad – 2014-09-10T04:26:58.870

1yes, I think 2 are for folders and 2 for files. – magicandre1981 – 2014-09-10T04:27:36.737

Very useful info here - thanks. On Windows 10 I couldn't rename any OneDrive handlers so I just added 2 spaces in front of the ones I wanted to keep to override the one space the boffins added in front on the OneDrive handlers to shift their order. – CAD bloke – 2015-08-22T11:00:33.303

Thanks @cadbloke. We should probably update the answers for Windows 10. – Mehrad – 2015-08-22T13:34:45.283

And now it's 2017 and 10 Dropbox icons... -.- – Egan Wolf – 2017-01-27T08:17:10.647

Answers

29

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

Posted 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Reputation: 415

1I am more than happy to mark your answer as the right one. My answer was based on what information was available and certainly I didn't go into the trouble of enabling/disabling every single one of them to find out. Thanks for the good work. – Mehrad – 2014-10-16T23:56:08.057

1If I could upvote this answer every time I came here after Derpbox updated their wretched client Danny A would be winning this site. – CAD bloke – 2018-05-30T07:01:16.997

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

Posted 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Reputation: 161

3

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

Usman Farooq

Posted 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Reputation: 31

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

magicandre1981

Posted 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Reputation: 86 560

To be explicit, am I to understand: DropBoxExt1 - Ready Folder, DropBoxExt2 - Syncing Folder, DropBoxExt3 - ReadyFile, DropBoxExt4 - Syncing File ? If we wanted to clear some ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers then the Ready Folder and Ready File could go. I think this is becoming the default for Microsoft OneDrive (SkyDrive) now. – Sun – 2014-10-14T16:49:47.393

DropBox uses the same overlay for files and folders, the difference between the pairs 1/3, 2/4, 5/6 and 7/8 is the additional padlock for locked files, see this answer

– Tobias Kienzler – 2017-01-24T07:02:00.907

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

Posted 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Reputation: 801

0

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

Posted 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Reputation: 29

Asked: 2014-09-10T00:06:20.467

Viewed: 16 342 times

Active: 2019-06-27T00:46:18.880