Many of you already know about Windows God mode, the nickname for that special
folder you can create by creating a folder and then naming it this weird code looking thing.
And then it has a whole bunch, basically all the settings in control panel, in one place.
But that is not the only special type of folder you can create using special names as a folder.
So that's what we're gonna go over today. What the deal is with these,
and what other ones there might be, how they even work,
and actually there's probably like around a hundred of them that I found. Now these
special folders don't exactly have any kind of special name as far as I've found. There is a
Microsoft article that refers to the technique as "using file system folders as junction points",
which isn't exactly uh, a user friendly name. Now "file system folder" is just a folder.
And then a junction point is kind of like an advanced type of shortcut,
you can think of it as. If you want the detailed explanation,
you can watch my other video I made about super shortcuts, symbolic links, that type of thing
for more details. So let me actually explain where these special codes come from and why they direct
to where they do and where you can actually find them. You see most menus,
I think all menus actually in Windows, have an associated CLSID it's called,
it's basically just kind of a reference number that is used internally. And you
can actually find these in the windows registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID
and then all the folders in here, they're actually keys, but they have folder icons.
And all of these in the brackets are CLSIDs. Now to be clear,
not all of these are for some kind of special menu or folder or anything. All of these are
for different windows "application components" they're called, just like little functional bits
of Windows. So for example, there's one in here that is called "Microsoft MoveTo service".
So I guess that's the thing that would be called when you try to
move an object. There's also "sort by column Explorer command", so I guess when you go to
sort a column, this thing gets called. And of course these both have CLSIDs along with
anything else in here that does random stuff, but also it contains those menus and folders that
are actually accessible through windows Explorer, such as the God Mode one.
And for those that are actually accessible through File Explorer,
if you want to create a shortcut to it, what you do is you take that CLSID and then create
a new folder, put a period in front of it and then paste the CLSID. You can put
anything you want in front of the period, it really doesn't matter.
But as long as it's period and then all that code, and then it will create a shortcut
to that location. And we can even do a search for the one that is for the so-called God Mode.
And there it is in the CLSID registry keys, along with all the other stuff. One thing
to note though, is that when you go to create one of these special shortcuts,
the name you give it before the period won't actually show up,
it used to in older versions, but it won't now. The icon will just be blank.
If you do want to name it, you can do that differently, but you have to use it with a
shortcut. So to do that just right click wherever, hit create shortcut. And then for the target,
what you do is you put "Explorer" and then space, and then "shell"
and then three colons and then whatever CLSID again. And there has to be the three colons there.
And then it will ask you next, what you want to name it. And then that will actually show
and go to the same place. Unfortunately, this way it just shows the default File Explorer icon,
but you can go and manually change the icon if you want. So out of all of these,
how can you actually tell which ones are for a menu you can access?
And I actually found a couple different types of special CLSIDs. Not all of them are in here.
There's another one I'll get to next. So one of the types of the
shortcuts in here are for system applications, I guess they're called. So what you can actually
do is look for any of the CLSIDs that has a sub-key that says System.ApplicationName.
And from what I have gathered, all of those do access some kind of special menu. And there's
also other ways that I found, for example, I believe all the ones that are actually accessible
also have a sub key called "ShellFolder". However, not all the ones that have shell
folders are accessible, so it's kind of like a square / rectangle situation.
So for those it's more of a trial and error type thing. However,
there is another type of special folder shortcut thing called Shell Folders that I can go over,
they work a little bit differently. Now, speaking of stuff that's special and cool though,
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put that link in the description. And with all that being said, let's continue. All right so
like I said before, there are also other types of shortcuts called Shell Folders.
And I came across these because the CLSID ones kinda get mixed up in these, a lot of people
call them the same thing, but I don't think they really are. Basically these Shell Folders
shortcuts are gonna go to some specific actual location, not like a menu,
and all of them have the format where you put "shell" colon, and then the name of the thing.
And then it goes to that location. And where you use this is either in the Run dialogue box,
or you can also create an actual just shortcut, you can put it in there,
and I'll explain how to do that more in detail. But one example
is if you go into Run and do shell:startup that opens up the folder that gets run automatically.
You can put stuff in there if you want it to start up with Windows. Another one is shell:AppData,
that goes to the AppData folder. And if instead you want to create a regular clickable shortcut,
then what you do is click New Shortcut and then type in as the target "explorer" and then space,
and then the same shell:whatever. So with these Shell Folder icons, where you put the name,
you only put one colon, not three, like you did before,
that's only if you're putting the raw CLSID not, like I mentioned,
all of these seem to go to an actual folder location. So they are more like regular shortcuts,
but they're more useful I think for just not having to remember where these things are.
I don't really want to have a shortcut taking up space on my desktop that goes to the startup
folder, cuz I almost never access it. But if I do, then instead of trying to remember where
it is or looking it up, I can simply go type shell:startup and it takes me right to it.
Now with a lot of them like AppData, there's also the %AppData% shortcut.
That's a different thing, that's an environment variable,
not gonna get into those, they're different. Now I know what you're probably thinking. All right,
great, but how do I actually like get a list of all of these? Well,
instead of actually digging through the registry, like I did, there's actually a way easier way.
Which is to use a free program called WinAero Tweaker. And this program I've
used it for a while, it's awesome, it does a whole bunch of other stuff
besides just what I'm gonna show you, but this is relevant for the video. Basically,
if you go down to one of the menus, it has a thing called "Shell Folder (CLSID) Shortcut".
And this basically shows you all of these special menus you can create folders for using the CLSID,
except you don't actually have to look at the CLSID and it'll actually show you
for most of them, the name of what it actually goes to. And it seems to do this automatically,
it's not just a pre-made list because I have some for like Dropbox,
Creative Cloud, that definitely were not pre-installed with Windows.
And they're still in here. Now, one thing to take note is even in this list,
not all of them may be usable and go to an actual menu that can be opened in
Windows Explorer. Some of them might just be for behind the scenes. So it'll either do nothing
or it'll say some kind of error when you try to open them.
Although most of these do actually work. And look, you can even find God Mode in here, the
actual name here is All Tasks. However, another important thing I wanna point out
is all of those Shell: shortcuts, don't actually show up in this
WinAero Tweaker. It doesn't have those, it only has the CLSID ones.
So if you want a list of those, what I actually did is just created a Google
Doc with a spreadsheet and I'll put the link in the description so you can access that if
you want. And in there you can see, I put all these Shell shortcuts, at least in Windows 11,
which is what I'm using. If you're using an older version, or you're watching in the future,
they might be a bit different. I also added two other tabs with some raw data for the
CLSID info that I copied out of the registry, if you wanna look through that. You can just
read the little descriptions I wrote on those tabs. Again, those are just extra,
they're not necessary, it's way easier to just get it through WinAero Tweaker.
So now you know, if you ever wondered what the real deal was with that
God Mode folder everyone called it, or if you were wondering if there were any other
locations you could create such things for, now you can. Thanks again to Mine for sponsoring
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The link is also in the description. If you guys wanna keep watching,
the next video I'd recommend is the one I mentioned before talking about
"super shortcuts" and "symbolic links" they're called in Windows. They're definitely really
useful and not many people know about 'em. So I'll put that link right there
you can click on. So thanks so much for watching guys, let me know what you think
down in the comments, give the video, like all that good stuff and I'll see in the next one.