How to change the colour of folders in Windows 8 and Windows 7. Colour code folders in Windows Explorer to help you work faster.
Why change colour of folders in Windows 8 and Windows 7
Making your folders different colours has more than a cosmetic affect makes navigating Windows folders much easier. Maybe make urgent folders red, actionable this week could be amber, folders to share green and so on. We’ve seen reports that such colour coding can help speed things up when dragging and dropping files. It makes sense. It’s free, and easy to roll back, so why no follow the advice we offer below, try colour-coding folders in Windows and see if it helps you work more quickly.
How to change colour of all folders in Windows 8 and Windows 7
For this article we are going to use Folder Colorizer. Folder Colorizer is free software with which you can assign a set colour to each folder in Explorer. There are other programs such as Folder Marker Free, but this is the one we have tried. And we like it (it’s free). Once you’ve installed it you are given some pre-set colours with which to start playing around. To install a specified colour simply right-click on any folder. You’ll see a new “Colorize!” option in your Explorer menu – unfortunately the US spelling and exclamation point are non-negotiable. From this option you can choose a colour for your folder. The changes you choose take effect immediately. And if you don’t like the change you’ve made you can change to another colour, choose “restore original color”, or reveal the hidden files in Explorer to reveal a temporary colour file inside the folder. Delete that and your folder’s original colour will immediately re-appear. There’s more customisation that we expect you can use. If you don’t like the preset colours you can create your own with a colour wheel that allows you to point to red, green, yellow, and so on. Remember not to colour-code Read-only files if you want to use this system to improve dragging-and-dropping speeds. To check, right-click on the folder, choose “properties “, and in the “general ” tab, look at the “attributes ” section. The Read-Only box is there–just make sure it’s unchecked and once that’s done, you’ll be ready to give the folder a fresh coat of paint. See all How to articles.
Matt Egan is Global Editorial Director of IDG, publisher of Tech Advisor, and a passionate technology fan who writes on subjects as diverse as smartphones, internet security, social media and Windows.
