Version History

We added a pager to the Options tab.

We added an option to automatically select your default palette when the app starts up. If you don’t have a default palette, the app starts up with the last palette used.

We added an option to run the app in dark mode even if you otherwise run Windows in light mode.

1.1.0.21 (15/11/2024)

New

We added support for network folders (public testing). This requires a specific registry setting. See here.
We added an option to use full size inset images.

We added an eye dropper tool to the advanced color mixer. Please note: Slower PCs may have a performance impact.

When you resize an overlay icon, crop warning lines now appear when you’re approaching the crop limits.

Starting with version 1.1.0.21, you can now save and open your icon designs (public testing). The “Save/Open color to/from file” buttons next to the preview on the main window has been updated to “Save/open icon design” accordingly.

(The legacy “Save/Open color to/from file” option remains on the Advanced Color Mixer window.)

Please note that options like “Use open folder icon style”, “Full size inset image”, etc. will change to match the icon design. This is by design.

This feature is in public testing. Let us know if you encounter any issues.

Changes / Improvements

• When running the app, the app will now select the last used color instead of the default color when neither is set to be automatically selected in Options.
• We updated the demo window for unlicensed / free users with fresh examples of what Windows 11 Folder Color Changer can do.
• We updated the ‘find’ label on Manage folders.
• When selecting “Specify position…” on the overlay icon window, we now show an alert to select an overlay image to enable the controls.
• When clicking and holding the + or – buttons on the overlay icon window, the icon will automatically move in the specified direction.
• We made some improvements when resizing overlay icons. The process will now appear smoother.
• We improved the readability of the service messages, about, and other text boxes in dark mode.
• We fixed a few non-breaking bugs.

1.1.0.20 (30/05/2024)

This is mostly a service update.

• We added a double click event to the target pictures. If you double click the target picture, the app will switch to the Manage folders tab.
• We fixed the taskbar icon for the app when the “Combine” option is enabled in Windows settings.
• We changed the base color to yellow when selecting a cover image after selecting the native color under Quick pick.
• We fixed the issue where the cover icon disappears when an overlay icon is selected and subsequently cancelled.
• The “How to use this app” link now disappears when you select an overlay icon. This is to ensure that positioning or resizing the overlay icon doesn’t overlap the link. We’re working on an option to hide the link completely once you know the ins and outs of the app.
• We fixed the issue where the app doesn’t start on the centre of the screen when the displayed is scaled to 125+.
• We fixed the issue where the service message alert appears when the app starts with Windows.
• We removed several unused DLLs from earlier versions of the app.

1.1.0.19 (27/05/2024)

New

Starting with version 1.1.0.19, we’re consolidating the main feature controls and palettes on their own tabs on the “Home” tab. (Because of this change, we removed the “Palettes” mini button next to the preview icon).

• We added a “mini” target to the palettes tab so you can still drag folders from Windows Explorer without first having to click the Controls tab. To accommodate this change, the color tiles in the palette are now a bit smaller.
• You can now click and hold a color tile in the palette to edit the color in the “Advanced color mixer” without having to specifically click the “Advanced color mixer” button.
• We also added the “Apply selected color/icon” button to the “Palettes” tab so you don’t have to first click the “Controls” tab to apply your changes.

• We added the “How to use this app” link below the preview icon for the full version as well.
• When mixing a color on the color palette, the (new) color now stays put on its initial color tile. The tiles no longer move on one “space”, adding each (new) color to the start.
• When switching/selecting between the installed palettes, the currently selected color no longer automatically changes to the first color in the newly selected palette.
• We added tooltips to the folders list on “Manage folders“. This way, you don’t necessarily have to scroll right to view the entire folder name, for example:

We added options to uninstall the selected palette and backup or restore palettes.

Fixes

• We restored the “Remove folder” button that somehow disappeared from the “Manage folders” tab in one of our earlier updates.
• We fixed an issue where message dialogs don’t always appear in the Windows color mode (dark/light).
• We fixed several issues with the new color palette feature, including:
  • Errors saving the current color palette
  • White color tiles every time you switch between “Controls” and “Palettes” mode (tabs)
• We fixed an issue where trying to find folders using the “Find string” field on “Manage folders” resulted in restoring (of all things!) the native Windows folder icon for the selected folder(s). It seems to have come about due to an accidental change to the “Find” button that caused the button’s command action to redirect to the “Restore native icon” button.
• We fixed an issue where a folder could be added more than one time to the folder list.
• The app icon now shows up when running the app from the context menu.

App folder checkpoint

We added a checkpoint that will alert the user if the app isn’t running from the expected installation folder. For example, if you upgrade a very old version of the app, the app may run from that folder instead of the Appdata\Roaming folder.

If this happened, the app would exhibit abormal behaviour. This alert now helps alert the user to first uninstall the older version of the app before installing the updated version.

1.1.0.18 (23/05/2024)

New

• The next version of Windows 11 Folder Color Changer brings color palettes. Choose from more than twenty pre-set color palettes or create your own!
• We added Open color from file and Save color to file buttons on the Advanced color mixer window.

Fixes and Changes

We fixed the Clear overlay icon button that seemingly stopped working. We also made some changes to improve the efficiency of the Customize overlay icon window.

We fixed the Save color to file and Open color from file icons that we swopped the wrong way around.

We fixed an arithmetic overflow error on the Advanced color mixer window that caused the icon to completely change color if the brightness slider exceeded certain thresholds.

We also made some changes to improve the efficiency of the brightness slider on the Advanced color mixer window.

Just a reminder that overlay icons and inset images cannot be used at the same time. When using the “open folder” icon, the option to customize an overlay icon will be disabled. When using the “standard folder”icon (i.e. “Use ‘open folder’ icon” is set to ‘off’), the option to select an inset image will be disabled.

1.1.0.17 (22/05/2024)

New

• If the Include sub folders setting is enabled, Windows 11 Folder Color Changer will now add sub folders for folders added through the Manage Folders tab.
• Windows 11 Folder Color Changer will now warn you if you’re about to add (or update) more than 200 folders. This is because the app typically stops responding while iterating through large numbers of folders.
• We fixed an unhandled exception that was introduced with build 1.1.0.16 when trying to open the Customize overlay icon window.
• To help boost performance, we disabled the automatic light/dark mode detection. If Windows changes from light to dark mode or the other way around, you now need to restart the app for the change to take effect.
• We added back the horizontal scroll bar to the folder list on the Manage Folders tab that somehow managed to disappear in one of the updates to the app.

The brave and daring can enable an experimental feature by editing the Settings.ini file as follows:

This will enable the following feature on the Tools tab:

1.1.0.16 (17/05/2024)

New

We’re enabling the ability to save and load individual colors as we’re moving forward with custom color sets.

Changed

The folder browser and open folder list / save folder list dialogs now use the native dark mode in Windows 11.

The app now utilises the native message box in Windows to improve performance.

Please note: These interfaces in particular implement native Windows APIs, so there are some slight visual design differences. We also fixed an issue where, when opening a saved folder list, the folders are duplicated.

It is now possible to disable dark theme and shadows to boost performance. The app can perform up to 25% faster on slower computers (warning: the app will run in light mode!)

The brave and daring can enable an experimental feature by editing the Settings.ini file as follows:

1.1.0.15 (13/05/2024)

New

• Added six new beautiful colors to the freeware version

1.1.0.14 (10/05/2024)

New

• Starting with version 1.1.0.14, Windows 11 Folder Color Changer runs on Windows 10. However, Windows 10 users should note that for the time being, the icon style will be the same as on Windows 11 (so for consistency, change all the icons in any given sub folder!). We will add the Windows 10 icon style once we receive the artwork from our designers.

Changed

• Due to pirates misbehaving, we now require that you also provide the original e-mail address used when first licencing Windows 11 Folder Color Changer to re-use your product key.
• Many of our users were still not aware of the beautiful cover image feature, being packed away under Quick Pick. We therefore moved the cover image feature from Quick Pick to a button on the Home tab.
• We added Service messages to the Tools tab.

1.1.0.13 (27/01/2024)

New

• Starting with version 1.1.0.13, you can now use the “open folder” icon which Windows typically uses when displaying folder content, for example:

• To use the “open folder” icon, on the “Options” tab, enable “Use ‘open folder’ icon.

• Fully licensed (premium) users can also select an inset icon to indicate the folder content, for example:

• To select an inset image, on the “Home” tab, click “Select inset image…”

• You can use any BMP, ICO, JPG, PNG, or TIFF image, as long as it’s at least 115x115px in size.
• Please note: Overlay icons and inset images cannot be used at the same time. When using the “open folder” icon, the option to customize an overlay icon will be disabled. When using the “standard folder”icon (i.e. “Use ‘open folder’ icon” is set to ‘off’), the option to select an inset image will be disabled.
• Fully licensed (premium) users can also mask the folder icon like Windows does, for example:

  • To mask the folder icon, on the “Options” tab, also enable “Apply mask to ‘open folder’ icon with inset”.

• Starting with version 1.1.0.13, you can now select BMP, ICO, JPG, and TIFF images as your overlay icon in addition to PNG. We subsequently updated the button label from “Select PNG” to “Select image”.

NOTES ON USING THE “OPEN FOLDER” ICON

As already stated, you cannot combine the open folder icon with overlay icons. This is because overlay icons go on top, whilst the purpose of the open folder icon is to facilitate an inset icon to indicate the folder’s content.

If you select a cover image when using an open folder icon, the folder will revert to the standard folder. This is to prevent your cover image from being “squashed” into the lower part of the open folder icon. To revert to the open folder icon, select Quick pick… use native color or re-select an inset image.

Changed

• We made minor adjustments to the layout of the Home tab.
• Renamed “Close app after applying folder icon(s)” to “Close app after applying folder icons“
• Renamed “Keep folder list when app stays open after applying folder icons” to “Keep folder list after applying folder icons“

Fixed

• We fixed a few more issues that persisted with the mini preview icons. If you discover any further issues, please let our team know how to replicate the issue.
• We fixed the issue where the app loaded in full view on Windows startup when hotkeys are enabled.
• We fixed a very peculiar issue where clicking “Run Task Manager” on the “Options” tab opened the “old” Task Manager even on newer Windows 11 builds such as 23H2.
• We fixed a few more minor scaling issues.
• We fixed an issue in the licensing engine where activation failed where a user has multiple hard drives/partitions.
• We noticed that the pink folder in the free version doesn’t match the pink tile. This is mostly due to how the pink gradient is applied to the icon. We manually updated the pink tile’s color to bring the two colors closer together.