How do I remove the Dropbox icon from the Windows 10 file explorer?

[Jeremy C.3]

Since upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, there is a Dropbox icon in the Windows file explorer navigation pane.  I already have a link to Dropbox and other cloud-storage options in the Quick links section of the file explorer, so I don't need this extra icon!

How do I remove the Dropbox icon from the navigation pane?  And to be clear,  I don't mean the quick-link, I mean the stand-alone 'system-type' icon in the navigation area.

[Irene W.]

Jeremy, I've gotten below solution from another forum and it worked for me. The icon finally disappeared from my navigation pane:

Hope this works for you too:

Open the start menu and search for "regedit", it should suggest "run command", with an icon of a blue block made of smaller blue blocks. click on that. be careful in this program, because if you start randomly deleting stuff in here, you can very easily crash your computer in a lot of different ways.

on the left pane of regedit, start going through the folders and get to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{E31EA727-12ED-4702-820C-4B6445F28E1A}"

on the right pane, you should now see some items. double-click on "System.IsPinnedToNamespaceTree", and it should open up a new little window. change "Value data" to the number 0, and click ok.

I rebooted my computer after the final step and the dropbox icon didn't reappear 🙂

[Jeremy C.3]

Thanks Irene, I had already tried that and although the Dropbox icon disappears immediately, it reappears after reboot 😞

I even searched through the registry for all occurrences of the partial key "E31EA727" - there are about 4 or so of them altogether, all belonging to Dropbox, and some also containing the "System.IsPinnedToNamespaceTree" entry.  I set all of them to zero, but still the wretched Dropbox icon reappears after reboot.

Rick M - I object because the icon doesn't belong there!  It merely references an existing folder - it's not a separate drive, not a network location and not a library, it's just a FOLDER. There is no reason to create an icon there which just takes up space, especially in view of the fact that most* of the other cloud drive applications DON'T have an icon in the navigation pane, and thus they can all be grouped neatly under Quick Access by creating shortcuts for them if required.

* Note: In the case of OneDrive, the icon can be permanently removed by a registry edit and it stays removed.  Not so with Dropbox, which is a pain.

[Rick_M]

Jeremy, can you post a partial-screenshot of what you see? (I just don't think I am seeing the same thing). Thanks, Rick

[Jeremy C.3]

Here's a .jpg showing the location of the offending icon.  Note that I've got all the other cloud-storage folders listed neatly as required under "Quick access"...

[Rick_M]

Ok, navigate until the dropbox folder is in the right-hand pane,  right-click on the icon, select "properties", Customize tab, then click the "change icon" button at the bottom. This will let you change the icon - at least for the moment. DB changes the icon to indicate "up to date", etc.

[Jeremy C.3]

Hi Rick M,

But I don't want to change the icon - I want to get rid of it from the navigation pane... and since this visible icon is at top level - at the same level as "Quick access", "Computer" etc., I don't see that there is any way to get it into the right hand pane.

Or do you mean, follow the path to the actual Dropbox folder, i.e.  C:\users\Jeremy\Dropbox and get *that* icon in the right hand pane?  If so, yes, I can change the icon there (and it changes to show an updated tick), but it doesn't change the appearance of the icon in the navigation pane (still a box), nor does it delete it from the navigation pane which is what I want to do.

Here's screenshot of the changed icon. Now what?

[Rick_M]

Now that THAT's clear (sorry it took me so long), it is clearly a Windows problem!-) What happens if you set the folder to "Hidden"?

[Jeremy C.3]

No, I'd say it's clearly a Dropbox problem.  You can remove the icon from the navigation pane by editing the registry, but something consistently puts it back after a reboot - at least it does on my system.  The smoking gun points to Dropbox, as far as I am concerned.  Marking the actual Dropbox folder as hidden doesn't seem to achieve anything - it's still visible and so is the icon in the navigation pane.

[Rajesh R Pai]

I am having the same problem on my Windows 10 laptop.  Waiting for a permanent solution to this annoying problem.

[Rick_M]

If you haven't already, submit a ticket at www.dropbox.com/support