Add option to disable icon overlays in Windows Explorer

[StopMessingWithOverlayIcons]

Please add an option to disable Dropbox icon overlays. It is so frustrating to remove Dropbox Shell Icon identifiers from the top of ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers list after each update! 

It is disrespectful to users to decide for them which overlays they need. 

I'm using TortoiseGit and I really need its overlays, they are useful and important for my work. Every time Dropbox updates I can no longer see status icons and have to go to Registry editor and remove newly added and USELESS Dropbox overlays.

I've seen dozens of feature requests from Dropbox users for many years but Dropbox pretends everything is fine!

UPD: 

I had patience to open a thread and communicate with Dropbox team on this issue. After almost 2 years, more than 100 upvotes they have just thrown my idea away suggesting me to edit Windows registry. I've heared your answer, that's how you treat your loyal users.

So long Dropbox!

[StopMessingWithOverlayIcons]

@FatDog1 luckily, I've just finished setting up of newly installed Windows and when googling for regedit path I've stumbled upon this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shell_icon_overlay_identifiers

You can choose and leave whatever overlays you need most. You can even remove all of them, it will not affect Dropbox in any way.

However I'm  afraid that number of keys under "ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers" key has nothing to do with Windows Explorer performance, you should investigate bottleneck elsewhere.

Best regards,

Alex

[FatDog1]

Thanks!!

[Jay]

Hi everyone, as a workaround for disabling the Dropbox sync icons, you can follow the steps provided by @Stargx on this post.

As a warning, please exercise extreme caution when using the Registry Editor. If you edit the registry incorrectly, serious problems might occur that could require a complete reinstall of the operating system and result in data loss. 

[StopMessingWithOverlayIcons]

Wow, didn't know about permissions, thank you

[StopMessingWithOverlayIcons]

@Jay why was this thread moved from "Dropbox ideas" to "Dropbox installs & integrations"? It had "In review" status

[johne53]

Jay wrote:

" please exercise extreme caution when using the Registry Editor. If you edit the registry incorrectly, serious problems might occur that could require a complete reinstall of the operating system and result in data loss. "

And that's preferable - rather than having the development team go ahead and implement this feature??

Surely enough people have requested it by now? If the Dropbox team still won't implement it, it's high time they offered a credible explanation.

[SteveMagruder]

Because of this issue, I finally decided to switch to OneDrive (and I'm not the biggest fan of Microsoft, trust). I was using Dropbox for syncing files that the Joplin notes app uses on different devices. But having to fix my registry every time Dropbox updates was becoming a kind of grind. It seems to me this issue should have been addressed a long time ago. OneDrive doesn't clobber my Tortoise overlays, so why should Dropbox?

[StopMessingWithOverlayIcons]

I had patience to open a thread and communicate with Dropbox team on this issue. After almost 2 years, more than 100 upvotes they have just thrown my idea away suggesting me to edit Windows registry. I've heared your answer, that's how you treat your loyal users.

So long Dropbox!

[nofish2]

Yeah, it's disappointing. 😞

[mrudin]

Walter, the ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers issue is continually annoying to me and other developers who need to prioritise use of overlays.

I've added a 'like' to StopMessingWithOverlayIcons's post - is that where we should be voting?

All the permanent 'accepted solutions' to this so far have involved abandoning Dropbox, and using OneDrive or similar instead.

Mike