In Windows 10 Quick access has replaced Favourites from Windows 7 and 8. Favourites were actually stored in the current user’s Links folder. Links were shortcuts. We’ve all been using them since Windows 95, and we love them. Shortcuts can be renamed and even given icons to help you quickly identify them. It was also very easy to copy all of your links from your desktop to your laptop, or to restore them after doing a clean install.
Not anymore. Quick access folders are not shortcuts, so you can’t rename them or change the icon. If you go into the pinned folder’s Properties and rename it, you’re renaming the actual folder. So, right now I have three folders with the same name pinned in my File Explorer. This is a major step backwards.
In Windows Vista, there was a splitter between Favourites and the tree view below. This allowed you to browse with the tree view and still have your Favourites visible all the time. This was even better than Windows 7 and 8. Yep, I miss something from Windows Vista. If 7, 8 or 10 used a splitter, I would use the Expand to open folder option. And why isn’t there a button to do this on demand?
I normally use the File Explorer on the top half of a 1200×1920 vertical screen. In Windows 10, File Explorer refuses to honour my last used position. Close File Explorer and immediately reopen it, and it shifts down and right 26 pixels. Genius. And this happens with no other windows open. If File Explorer is resized to the monitor’s dimensions, it does honour the position, so the code is there, it’s just poorly implemented.
In fact, we should be able to have multiple window positions remembered. So, a desktop shortcut to one folder could open on monitor 1, and another shortcut could open on monitor 6. This is precisely what I’ve done with five different Git Bash shortcuts on my desktop. Each one opens exactly where I expect it to, at the right size.
And where are the tabs? Everything else has had tabs for the last decade. In 2015, we’re still waiting for a tabbed File Explorer.
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