Change Group by Folder View in Windows 10

SpacemanSam · 06 Apr 2022

I think I understand what you want to do. Try the following:
Open the base directory, click on the "View" tab, and set the "Sort by" and "Group by" the way you want.
Click the drop-down arrow under "Options" at the far right of the ribbon and select "Change folder and search options" (the only choice).
On the "Folder Options" pop-up, select the "View" tab.
Click the "Apply to Folders" button.

Your chosen options should then apply to all directories of that type (pictures, I presume).

If you want to do it programmatically, you will need to find the registry keys involved. To do this:
Before performing the above changes, open RegEdit, right-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and select "Export". Save the result as m1.reg.
Perform the modifications described above.
Go back to RegEdit, leftt-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then press <F5> to refresh RegEdit.
Export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE again, saving the changed copy to m2.reg.
In Explorer, open the directory where you saved the 2 .reg files, then use a file-comparison program such as WinMerge to compare them.

The values you need to change will most likely be in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes, so you should look there first. Also check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes, as the same values probably appear there too.

And as changes of this type are usually considered to be user-specific, you should check HKEY_CURRENT_USER before-and-after first and if you don't find anything there, check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

Once you have found the registry changes you want, you can modify my code appropriately.

Xii · 19 Apr 2022

SpacemanSam said:

I think I understand what you want to do. Try the following:
Open the base directory, click on the "View" tab, and set the "Sort by" and "Group by" the way you want.
Click the drop-down arrow under "Options" at the far right of the ribbon and select "Change folder and search options" (the only choice).
On the "Folder Options" pop-up, select the "View" tab.
Click the "Apply to Folders" button.

Your chosen options should then apply to all directories of that type (pictures, I presume).

If you want to do it programmatically, you will need to find the registry keys involved. To do this:
Before performing the above changes, open RegEdit, right-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and select "Export". Save the result as m1.reg.
Perform the modifications described above.
Go back to RegEdit, leftt-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then press <F5> to refresh RegEdit.
Export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE again, saving the changed copy to m2.reg.
In Explorer, open the directory where you saved the 2 .reg files, then use a file-comparison program such as WinMerge to compare them.

The values you need to change will most likely be in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes, so you should look there first. Also check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes, as the same values probably appear there too.

And as changes of this type are usually considered to be user-specific, you should check HKEY_CURRENT_USER before-and-after first and if you don't find anything there, check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

Once you have found the registry changes you want, you can modify my code appropriately.

Hmm this mostly worked.
It applied to some subfolders but not others. When Selecting apply to folders it did mention they needed to be of the same type but I'm not sure whats different. My only guess is its referring to "optimize this folder for' and for some reason certain folders are on general and not Pictures.

Edit: that was the reason, and it was easy to fix since there's an apply to all folders button when changing optimization.

Also a few odd things I noticed:
dimensions showed as an option by default but was unchecked in choose columns and in the not context menu, and then also didn't appear in another folder, which I checked and had the same optimization.

Anyways Thanks for the help! Surprised I never noticed that button even though I always turn on show files extensions in there. This has come in really handy since whenever I change the name to disable it, so I can test out a few at a time without having to reload the whole pack, it would revert back the the defaults since the path is different.