How to pin a folder to the taskbar or Start Menu on Windows 10
You can pin a lot of things to the taskbar and the Start menu but Windows 10 doesn’t make it easy to do so. Anything that you pin to the taskbar or the Start menu that isn’t an app is normally pinned through a shortcut. Folders are no different. Here’s how you can pin a folder to the taskbar or to the Start menu on Windows 10.
Pin a folder to taskbar or Start menu
Before we proceed, the folder will need an icon of its own. If you don’t use a different icon, the folder will be easy to mistake for File Explorer. If you pin more than one folder to the taskbar or the Start menu, it will make it all the more difficult to find the folder you want to open. An icon is a simple, visual way to differentiate one folder from another.
You can download free icons, or if you have a PNG file, you can convert it to an icon file for Windows 10. Just make sure you don’t use anything that is copyright protected.
Go to your desktop and right-click an empty area. From the context menu select New>Shortcut. In the location field, enter the following.
explorer.exe complete-path-to-folder
Click Next, and change the name of the shortcut to that of the folder it is a shortcut to. Click Finish. Next, you need to change the icon for the folder. Right-click the shortcut and select Properties from the context menu. On the Shortcut tab, click the ‘Change Icon’ button, and select the icon you want to use for the folder in the new window. Click OK, and then Apply. The icon for the shortcut will update.
Once you’ve changed the shortcut’s icon, you can pin it to the taskbar and/or the Start menu. Right-click it and you will see options for pinning the folder to the taskbar and Start menu.
When you pin the shortcut to the taskbar, or to the Start menu, the name you gave the shortcut is what it appears with. In the case of the taskbar, the name will appear when you hover the mouse over it. The name can be different from the name of the folder that it opens.
Once you’ve pinned the folder, you can delete the shortcut that you created. It will not unpin the folder but, if you ever need to modify it e.g, change its icon, you will need to recreate the shortcut.
