In Windows 8, Microsoft changed the look of the good old Explorer application completely. It got the Ribbon UI instead of the menu and a toolbar which is hard to disable. The status bar shows how many files and folders are in the opened folder and some brief information about the selected file. There are also tiny buttons to switch the view of a folder's contents. In this article, we will see how to enable or disable the status bar in File Explorer.
The tiny buttons are not useful for me, because they are just too small. Personally, I prefer to use hotkeys to switch between views in File Explorer, as described in the following article:
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How to switch between views in File Explorer with keyboard shortcuts
If you find no use for the status bar in File Explorer, here is how to disable it.
To disable the status bar in File Explorer in Windows 10, do the following.
- Open This PC in File Explorer.
- In the Ribbon user interface of Explorer, click File -> Change folder and search options.
If you have disabled the Ribbon using a tool like Winaero Ribbon Disabler, press F10 -> click Tools menu - Folder Options. - Tip: you can add the Folder Options button to Quick Access Toolbar. See the following article: How to add any ribbon command to the Quick Access toolbar of File Explorer.
- Now you need to open Folder Options. The Folder Options command is on the View tab of the Ribbon. If you disabled the Ribbon, press Alt+T on your keyboard to open the Tools menu and then open Folder Options.
- Switch to the View tab. There, find the option named Show status bar and untick it. See the following screenshot.
The status bar will be disabled.
Before:
After:
Alternatively, you can apply a Registry tweak to disable the status bar as described below.
Disable Status Bar in Windows 10 File Explorer with a Registry tweak
Here is how it can be done.
- Open the Registry Editor app.
- Go to the following Registry key.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
See how to go to a Registry key with one click.
- On the right, modify or create a new 32-Bit DWORD value "ShowStatusBar". Set its value data to 0.
Note: Even if you are running 64-bit Windows you must still create a 32-bit DWORD value. - To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account.
That's it.
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I use the Classic Shell Explorer status bar and disable the Windows one. It is far more useful because it shows total size of files in a directory and disk free space without having to select anything.