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How to Remove the Green Check Mark on Desktop Icons of Windows 10/11

This guide has all the details for removing green check mark on desktop icons of Windows 10/11.

By David Garcia

Windows 10/11 files are stored on OneDrive, a Microsoft cloud storage application. By default, this feature is turned on in your system. This feature helps you to create a backup for your device files, and all the files and folders backed up are shown in a green check mark on their respective icons. If you want to remove the green check mark from your Desktop icons of Windows 10/11, this guide will help you.

How to Remove the Green Check Mark on Desktop icons of Windows 10/11

Remove green mark from Desktop icons of Windows 10 and 11

There are four methods to remove the Green mark from your Desktop icons, irrespective of Windows 10 or 11:

  • Disabling OneDrive Sync
  • Turning off OneDrive
  • Building new Icon Cache
  • Freeing Up Space

Disabling OneDrive Sync

  • On the system tray, click on the up arrow icon and look for all the hidden icons.
  • Click on the OneDrive icon, which is represented by a cloud icon.
  • A new menu will pop up, search and select the ‘Help and Settings’ option from here.
  • Select the time period till you want to pause the syncing.
  • By default maximum limit to pause sync is 24 hours.
  • This means after 24 hours, OneDrive will start syncing again.
  • Pausing sync will remove the mark temporarily.
  • As soon as the syncing starts, the green mark will reappear.
  • To permanently remove the green check mark, Turning off OneDrive would be a better option.

Turning off OneDrive

  • To permanently remove the green mark by turning off OneDrive, open OneDrive > Help and Settings > Quit Drive.
  • This will disable OneDrive, and your files will store on your system’s drive instead of the cloud.
  • It is the drawback of this method, as you are disabling the backup for your files, which means you might permanently lose your files once deleted.

Building new Icon Cache

If you want to keep your OneDrive running and keep the sync on for the backup but also remove the green check marks, building a new icon cache might help you. Icon cache is a database that stores copies of every desktop icon on your window. To use them, Open Command Prompt from the search menu by typing CMD and then clicking on run as administrator and copy-paste the following code:

exe-show
taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F
DEL /A /Q “%localappdata%\IconCache.db”
DEL /A /F /Q “%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*”
Shutdown /p

When you run this code, the second line will temporarily close the Explorer process, and you will see a blank screen. When you enter the final code, your system will shut down, and now when you restart your system after some time, you can see the icons with no green markings.

Freeing Up Space

Deleting the copy of your OneDrive file will automatically remove the green mark from your desktop icon. To delete the copy from OneDrive, follow these steps:

  • Right-click on the desired icon and click on the free-up space option from the menu.
  • The file copy is deleted from OneDrive.
  • This method is lengthy, as you will need to repeat the steps for each icon.

That’s everything covered on how to remove the green check marks from desktop icons. Also, check out our guide on how to turn on Hibernation Mode on Windows 10 and 11.