What does green checkmark mean on Google Drive?

by

You may see the green checkmark on Google Drive files in your PC. But what does the green checkmark mean on Google Drive files?

Overlayed green check (tick) mark icon on files and folders represents that these files and folders are synced. Online file hosting and synchronizing services like Google Drive indicate synced files and folders with a green checkmark. So the green checkmark on Google Drive essentially means that your Google Drive files are synchronized on your PC.

From your Files Explorer, you can synchronize or stop synchronizing the content between your computer and your Google Drive account. Let’s dive deep into this article to learn what does the green checkmark means on Google Drive.

What does the green checkmark mean on Google Drive?

Generally, icons in Google Drive for your Mac/PC closely resemble their online counterparts. But the downloaded Google drive files and folders synced to your Google Drive are identical, and they’ll show a green checkmark over the icon when they’re successfully synced.

Any file types or folders that have previously shown identical icons will show a green checkmark when they’re successfully synced.

What does green checkmark mean on Google Drive?
What does green checkmark mean on Google Drive?

How to remove the green checkmark on Google Drive?

You can remove the green checkmark on Google Drive by doing some quick hacks. To remove those overlay gree checkmark overlay icons from your Google Drive files and folders, follow the below steps.

Step 1: Open Windows Registry Editor by pressing Win + R. Now type in “regedit” and hit ‘Enter’ to open it.

Step 2: Then search for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers or navigate one by one.

Step 3: Under the ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers key, you will find keys of Google Drive you have installed on your computer.

Step 4: Now simply rename the key ‘GoogleDriveExt1‘ to something like ‘GoogleDriveExt1-D‘ or anything else you like so that windows cannot find the key value in the registry. Repeat this method to get rid of the green checkmark overlay from your desired Google Drive files or folders.

Step 5: Once done, restart your computer, or restart explorer using Task Manager.

You won’t find the green checkmark overlay icon on your synced files anymore. To get the green checkmark icons back, remove the text that you appended on the keys.

Google Drive green tick missing

Are your synced Google Drive files and folders green checkmark icon is missing? 

Then you can try two simple tricks to get it back.

  • Delete any entries other than Google Drive
  • Rename the entries by replacing letters with numbers as starting in front of the name. Google Drive entries takes 0’s and 1’s as the first entries, so replacing them with numbers works.

How to get green ticks on Google Drive back

Windows Explorer only allows for 15 slots for icon overlays (Green checkmarks). This implies that when you put more different online sync folders such as skydrive, then you may end up in using all 15 slots overlay.

This will get rid of green ticks from Google Drive files and folders. To get green ticks on Google Drive back, follow the below steps.

Step 1: Open Windows Registry Editor by pressing Win + R. Now type in “regedit” and hit ‘Enter’ to open it.

Step 2: Search for  HKEY\LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\ or just just navigate to the above.

Step 3: Find these 3 entries: ‘GDriveSharedOverlay’, ‘GDriveSyncedOverlay’ and ‘GDriveSyncingOverlay’ from the window that opens.

Step 4: Add a prefix ahead of each of them: ‘0GDriveSharedOverlay’, ‘1GDriveSyncingOverlay’ and ‘2GDriveSyncedOverlay’,

Step 5: Now reboot to get green ticks on Google Drive back.

You can able to see green checkmark on your Google Drive icons back. 

So whenever the green checkmark is missing or you reach the 15 icon buffer limit, you can repeat these steps.

You may like the following Google Drive articles:

And voila! It’s that simple to learn the green checkmark on Google Drive. You can synchronize or stop synchronizing the files and folders between your computer and Google Drive account. Just follow the above methods to sync Google Drive files and folders.