If the shortcut arrows are irritating you, then have faith, there is a
way to remove that little square overlay from all your programs' shortcut
icons.
If you don't like arrows on your desktop shortcuts, then this is a registry
tweak for you. A word of warning, while this registry tweak is not difficult
to achieve, success depends on you
absorbing two principles, which I will explain.
The crucial point is that you need a special clear icon
file; however, you don't have to make the overlay from scratch, just download
my noArrows.ico file. Once you
have the physical file then it's just a matter of 'wiring-up' its path to
a specific key in the registry called 'Shell
Icons'.
Preliminary Instructions
Make a note of the full path
where you extracted the file, for example: C:\ Guy\noarrows.ico
Just to see the effect of the .reg file, create a shortcut on your Windows 8 desktop;
a suitable target program is regedit itself, or you could use
your browser (IE or Mozilla).
Registry Instructions to Delete a Windows 8 Shortcut Arrow
There are several reasons why you may wish to create a .reg file in order to
get rid of those arrows on a Windows 8 shortcut. For instance, you may
want to apply this registry hack to lots of machines, you may wish to
document the change, and once you have the .reg file it's easy to amend and
reverse the change.
Let me start with an example .reg file. Let me follow up with a word
of caution:- Path. This Windows 8 .reg file won't work unless you have
a physical file. In my example, that icon file is called noarrows.ico,
furthermore the path is C: \\ Guy\noarrows.ico. I can help you with a
suitable .ico file, but you must make the necessary connection to its path on
your computer. Here is the file: noArrows.ico.
; Created by Guy Thomas.
Windows 8 Remove Shortcut Arrows.
Detailed Instructions
Open Notepad.exe
Copy the contents of the above blue box.
Paste in to Notepad.
Save as RemoveShortcut, but remember the .reg file extension.
Right-click RemoveShortcut.reg, select 'Merge'
from the short-cut menu.
Logoff. After you logon again check the desktop shortcuts;
the .reg file should have eliminated those annoying arrows.
Note: 3 if you see a change in the icons, but instead of
shortcut arrow you now get a phantom white
blob, it probably means there is something wrong with path statement in the
.reg file.
Guy
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Here is surprise. This Windows 8 .reg file below RESTORES the
shortcut! If you bear with me, my thinking is to show you something
extra, namely to demonstrate how you can remove a registry key using a .reg
file and a minus sign.
Important: If you wanted this file to delete the arrows, then
remove that tiny '-' in front of HKEY.
; Created by Guy Thomas. Purpose to delete
registry key with a .reg file.
Note 4: I would like to draw your attention to the position of the
minus sign in .reg files that delete keys, it must be INSIDE the square
brackets and BEFORE the path, thus: [ -HKEY.... ]
Note 5: Strictly speaking you don't need the REG_SZ
called '29' in a .reg file to delete the key; I left it here so that you
could more easily create the .reg file example that gets rid of the annoying
arrow (just remove the -). See more
about Windows 8 .reg files.
Summary of Creating Windows 8 Remove Shortcut Arrows
If you don't like arrows on your desktop shortcuts, then this registry
tweak is for you. Beware; while this registry tweak is not difficult
to achieve you do need to absorb two principles.
The crucial point is that you need a special clear icon
file; but don't worry, just download
noarrows.ico.
Once you have the physical file then it's just a matter of 'wiring-up' a key in the registry called 'Shell
Icons' to the location you saved the noarrows.ico file.
If you like this page then please share it with your friends
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