Remove arrow from shortcuts

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What is the arrow overlay?

Every shortcut on Windows - the ones on your Desktop, in folders, and in your Start menu - has a small white arrow in the bottom-left corner. That arrow is a system-drawn icon overlay that Windows adds to mark a file as a shortcut to something else, rather than the file itself. Microsoft added it back in Windows 95 so users wouldn’t accidentally open a shortcut thinking it was the real program, double-click it, and end up confused when “the file” disappeared after a move or rename.

The overlay is drawn by shell32.dll (a small icon resource at index 50, referenced by the path %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50 in the steps below). Windows looks up the “Shell Icons” registry key, asks for the icon to use when rendering shortcut arrows, and falls back to a transparent icon if you tell it to. That’s the trick this guide uses to make the arrows disappear.

Steps to remove the arrow from shortcuts

1. Open Run using Start+R.
2. Open Regedit by typing regedit and press Enter.
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer.
4. Right-click Explorer.
5. Click New > Key.
6. Rename the new key to Shell Icons.
7. Inside the new Shell Icons key, right-click in the right pane and choose New > String Value.
8. Rename the value to 29 and press Enter.
9. Set the value data to %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50.
10. Hit OK.
11. Log out and log back into Windows (or restart explorer.exe from Task Manager).
12. Enjoy arrow-free icons.

Heads up: steps 3 and 4 in earlier versions of this guide were “Chop down a tree” and “Pick up 2 logs” - a nod to Minecraft crafting. The actual regedit steps are above. If a tutorial tells you to gather wood in the middle of editing the registry, you’ve found a copy from the wrong website.

Why does the regedit trick work?

Windows keeps a list of “icon overlays” in the registry, and a small number of indexes are reserved for built-in overlays. Index 29 is the slot Windows checks first when deciding what to draw in the corner of a shortcut. By creating the Shell Icons key and giving it a value of 29 pointing to a single-pixel transparent icon (the -50 icon in shell32.dll is effectively blank when used in this slot), you’re telling Windows: “for the shortcut overlay slot, use this.” Windows then renders nothing.

The value of -50 is just the resource ID inside shell32.dll for the standard blank icon. Some guides use imageres.dll,197 or other entries; any small transparent icon works.

Alternative: third-party tools

If you don’t want to touch the registry yourself, several small free tools do the same job with a single click:

• Winaero Tweaker has a “Shortcut Arrow” toggle under Appearance → Shortcut Arrow that writes the same registry keys for you and lets you restore the default with one click.
• Ultimate Windows Tweaker and Win10/11 Start Menu Styler plugins have similar toggles.

The downside is that these are third-party utilities - they need admin rights to edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and you’re trusting them not to bundle anything unwanted. The registry edit is a single, well-documented change; for a one-time tweak it’s arguably cleaner to do it by hand.

Alternative: Group Policy (Pro/Enterprise)

On Windows 10/11 Pro and Enterprise editions, Group Policy has a setting for this too:

1. Open gpedit.msc.
2. Navigate to User Configuration → Administrative Templates → Start Menu and Taskbar.
3. Open Remove the Shortcut arrow from Shortcut Icons (or “Remove Shortcut arrow on shortcut icons” depending on the build).
4. Set it to Enabled.
5. Restart or run gpupdate /force.

Group Policy writes the same underlying registry key, so the visual result is identical. Useful if you’re rolling this out to multiple machines.

What if the registry edit doesn’t work?

A few things to check if the arrows are still there after the steps:

• Log out, don’t just lock. Locking the screen doesn’t refresh the desktop shell. Use Start → Sign out or restart explorer.exe from Task Manager (right-click explorer.exe → End task, then File → Run new task → explorer.exe).
• You may need admin rights. Editing under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE requires elevation. If regedit was opened as a standard user, the value won’t be created. Re-run regedit as administrator.
• The change only applies to new icons drawn after the refresh. Existing icons are cached, which is why a sign-out (or explorer.exe restart) is required. A full reboot also works.
• To undo the change: delete the 29 string value from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons and refresh. The default arrow returns.
• Windows 11 24H2+ behavior. A handful of the more recent Windows 11 builds have changed how overlays are drawn and can occasionally re-show the arrow in certain Explorer windows. The fix is the same - re-check the value, then sign out.

If everything else is correct and the arrows still appear, run gpupdate /force from an elevated command prompt, then sign out. A leftover Group Policy setting is sometimes fighting the registry edit.