When’s the final time you used File Explorer’s “Display file icon on thumbnails” possibility? How concerning the Sharing wizard? If the reply is “never,” you’re not alone. Microsoft has taken some utilization knowledge and determined to trim down the Folder Options in File Explorer for Windows 11. The curtailed choices are coming in construct 23481, at the moment within the Insider Preview Build. But in the event you’re particularly hooked up to any of them, you’ll have the ability to deliver them again with some registry tweaks.

According to the Windows Insider Blog (noticed by Tom’s Hardware), the Folder Options settings being eliminated are as follows:

• Hide Folder Merge battle.
• Always present icons, by no means thumbnails.
• Display file icon on thumbnails.
• Display file kind data on Folder suggestions.
• Hide protected OS recordsdata.
• Show drive letters.
• Show popup description for Folder and Desktop gadgets.
• Show encrypted or compressed NTFS recordsdata in colour.
• Use sharing wizard.

Exactly how occasionally these settings are used wasn’t shared by Microsoft.

As a basic precept, new working methods (or the perpetually replace mannequin Microsoft appears half-committed to) ought to supply extra choices moderately than fewer. One of my most straightforward measurements for enchancment from model to model is having the ability to dispose of third-party instruments I had beforehand relied on as a result of they’re now baked into the OS. Requiring a dive into the Registry Editor to re-enable an possibility you beforehand relied upon, even in the event you’re in a minority of customers, appears counter to that form of enchancment.

That mentioned, these modifications aren’t set in stone. The Insider Preview Build is used to check exactly this sort of minutia, and the ability customers that present suggestions by way of that channel are precisely the type of people that would possibly object to some or all of those modifications. We’ll see in the event that they make it into last builds later this 12 months. Or maybe we received’t see if Microsoft’s analysis of how occasionally these choices are literally used is correct.