Referring to the arrow overlay on all shortcut icons in Windows 7, recently groovy reader and contributor Beyond_Life asked “how do I get rid of that?” While the arrow is useful for differentiating between a shortcut and an application or file, since you don’t put shortcuts anywhere except the Desktop or Start menu it isn’t too hard to manage them without it. Here is how you get rid of that arrow for good!

Get Rid of The Windows 7 Shortcut Arrows: “The Long Way”

This method involves manually editing the Windows registry. If you aren’t comfortable with this or feel that it might take too long see the shorter method at the bottom of this How To.

Step 1

Click the Start Menu Orb, Type regedit into the search box and Press Enter.

Step 2

Browse to the following registry key:





KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons

If the Shell Icons key does not exist you’ll need to create it. To do so Right-Click the Explorer key and Select New > Key.

Be sure to exactly name the new key Shell Icons.

Step 3

In the right pane of the Shell Icons key, Right-Click any empty area and Select New > String Value. Name the new string 29.

Step 4

Right or Double-Click the 29 entry to modify it. In the value data box enter the following:

C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll,50

Click OK to Save changes.

Step 5

You can restart Explorer and the changes should take effect, but there it will appear to be a little buggy until you Restart your computer.

Done!

Now all of your shortcuts should now longer have an arrow overlay in the bottom-left corner! To change this back simply go back to the registry key and delete the 29 entry.

Get Rid of The Shortcut Overlay: “The Short Way”

If the above method was a little too long or complicated, here’s the easy way –but you’ll have to fetch a tool online. Download the Ultimate Windows Tweaker, and then extract the contents of the zip folder to any spot on your computer. The program is stand-alone so you won’t have to install it.

Run the Ultimate Windows Tweaker. Click the Additional Tweaks tab and Check the Remove arrows from Shortcut icons box. Click Apply to save changes and they should take effect after you restart your computer.

Questions, comments? Drop a note below!