How To Get Google Drive To Appear In The Windows 10 Shortcuts Sidebar In Explorer

If, like me, you have accounts with all of the cloud providers and you’ve installed all their clients on your Windows 10 PC, you may be as frustrated as I was that Dropbox, OneDrive and even Adobe’s Creative Cloud all add a link to your shared folder in the Shortcuts bar on the left of a Windows Explorer windows, but that Google Drive doesn’t! Well, it’s absence is an oversight by Google that can be rectified with a few registry entries, viz: 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}]
@="Google Drive"
"System.IsPinnedToNamespaceTree"=dword:00000001
"SortOrderIndex"=dword:00000042

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,59,00,53,00,54,00,45,00,4D,00,52,00,4F,00,4F,00,54,00,\
25,00,5C,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6D,00,33,00,32,00,5C,00,73,00,68,\
00,65,00,6C,00,6C,00,33,00,32,00,2E,00,64,00,6C,00,6C,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\ShellFolder]
"FolderValueFlags"=dword:00000028
"Attributes"=dword:f080004d

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}]
@="Google Drive"
"System.IsPinnedToNamespaceTree"=dword:00000001
"SortOrderIndex"=dword:00000042

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,59,00,53,00,54,00,45,00,4D,00,52,00,4F,00,4F,00,54,00,\
25,00,5C,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6D,00,33,00,32,00,5C,00,73,00,68,\
00,65,00,6C,00,6C,00,33,00,32,00,2E,00,64,00,6C,00,6C,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\ShellFolder]
"FolderValueFlags"=dword:00000028
"Attributes"=dword:f080004d

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Drive\\googledrivesync.exe,0"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\Instance]
"CLSID"="{0E5AAE11-A475-4c5b-AB00-C66DE400274E}"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\Instance\InitPropertyBag]
"Attributes"=dword:00000011
"TargetFolderPath"="T:\\Google Drive"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]
"{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}]
@="Google Drive"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Drive\\googledrivesync.exe,0"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\Instance]
"CLSID"="{0E5AAE11-A475-4c5b-AB00-C66DE400274E}"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{81539FE6-33C7-4CE7-90C7-1C7B8F2F2D41}\Instance\InitPropertyBag]
"Attributes"=dword:00000011
"TargetFolderPath"="T:\\Google Drive"

While this may look intimidating, it’s really quite simple – the only trick is knowing the correct CLSID’s (the long numbers in {curly brackets}).

To use this, create a new textfile named whatever you like, but give it a .reg extension, not a .txt extension. Then, cut and paste the lines above into the file and edit both occurances of:

"TargetFolderPath"="T:\\Google Drive"

to point to where your Google Drive shared folder is on your computer. Remember to escape any slashes by doubling them, as in the example above.

Then, save the file and double-click it. Windows will ask if you’re sure you want to add this to your registry – go ahead – and your Google Drive shortcut will appear between the icons for those other cloud services that did this for you!