Posey's Tips & Tricks
Set File Explorer to Open 'This PC' by Default
Learn how to configure File Explorer in Windows 11 to simplify access to your drives and folders.
One of the simplest configuration changes that I have made since making the switch to Windows 11 last year was to configure the File Explorer to open to the This PC screen. Normally, when you open File Explorer in Windows 11, it opens to the Home screen. The Home screen displays a collection of documents that Windows recommends for you. Right now for example, Windows is recommending a few Office documents related to a parabolic (zero gravity) flight campaign, along with a PowerPoint deck associated with a Webcast that I presented a few days ago. In addition to these recommended documents, you can also pin your “favorite” files (or the files that you use the most often) to the Home screen.
The Home screen undoubtedly has its place. However, I find the This PC screen to be a lot more useful, based on the way that I work. The This PC screen is the screen containing all of your PC's hard drives, mapped network drives, and connected devices.
Just to be clear, you don't have to decide between having access to the Home screen or the This PC screen. Even though the File Explorer defaults to the Home screen, you can access the This PC screen with a single click. In spite of this, I couldn't help but to notice that I was opening File Explorer countless times over the course of each day, and every single time, I had to manually click on This PC to access my mapped network drives. It was a lot more convenient to simply configure File Explorer to open directly to This PC. Thankfully, this is super easy to do.
To get started, open File Explorer just as you normally would. Next, click on the More icon (the three dots), found on the tool bar. Now choose the Options command from the resulting menu. This will cause Windows to open the Folder Options dialog box.
If you look at Figure 1, you can see that at the very top of the dialog box, there is an Open File Explorer to drop down box. This option is set to Home by default. All you have to do is to change this option from Home to This PC. Now, when you open File Explorer it will open directly to My PC.
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Figure 1. Choose the This PC option from the Open File Explorer to drop down menu.
As helpful as it may be to get File Explorer to display This PC by default, there is one more trick that I want to show you. You can configure Windows to include any or all of your library folders on the This PC screen.
Before I show you how this works, there are three quick things that I need to tell you. First, there are plenty of Websites that describe how to add library folders to the This PC screen. However, most of the articles that I have read seriously overcomplicate things. I will show you how to add the libraries the easy way.
The second thing that I need to tell you is that the technique that I am about to show you is intended for use with Windows 11. It may very well also work with Windows 10, but I haven't tested it.
The third thing that you need to know is that this technique requires you to modify the Windows registry. Any time that you edit the registry there is a small amount of risk involved since making a mistake can destroy Windows and / or your applications. As such, I recommend making a precautionary full system backup before continuing.
So with all of that said, go ahead and open up the Registry Editor. Now navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace. There will be several keys beneath the NameSpace key. Each of these keys has a long hexadecimal number as its name. When you click on a key, you will see that it contains two values. The Default value gives you a clue as to which library the key controls. The one shown in Figure 2 for example, controls the Pictures library. The HiddenByDefault value determines whether or not the library will be shown on the This PC screen.
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Figure 2. There are references to the libraries within the Windows registry.
As you look at the figure above, you will notice that HiddenByDefault has a value of 0x00000001. Change this value to 0x00000000, as shown in Figure 3. Now, open File Explorer, select the This PC screen, and refresh the display. You should see the library folder appear within File Explorer, as shown in Figure 4.
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Figure 3. Changing the HiddenByDefault value to 0x00000000 causes the library folder to be displayed.
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Figure 4. The Pictures library is now shown at the top of the This PC screen.
One last thing that I want to quickly mention about this technique is that there are two separate keys for most of the libraries. One of these keys is local and the other is not. For example, the Default value for one key is CLSID_ThisPCMyPicturesRegFolder. The other one is CLSID_ThisPCLocalPictureRegFolder. Make sure that you edit the key that has the word Local within its default value. Otherwise this technique will not work.
About the Author
Brien Posey is a 22-time Microsoft MVP with decades of IT experience. As a freelance writer, Posey has written thousands of articles and contributed to several dozen books on a wide variety of IT topics. Prior to going freelance, Posey was a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and health care facilities. He has also served as a network administrator for some of the country's largest insurance companies and for the Department of Defense at Fort Knox. In addition to his continued work in IT, Posey has spent the last several years actively training as a commercial scientist-astronaut candidate in preparation to fly on a mission to study polar mesospheric clouds from space. You can follow his spaceflight training on his Web site.