FolderDock

English | Русский

Folders on the Windows 11 taskbar — like the macOS Dock. Click a pinned folder icon → a popup with its contents (grid or list) right above the taskbar, no File Explorer needed.

Features

• Pin any folder to the taskbar via a shortcut with its own AppUserModelID — every folder gets a separate button, they never group with each other.
• Popup above the taskbar: a grid with thumbnails (images get previews) or a compact list. Toggle with a button in the header.
• Click a file → opens with the default app with folder context (NeighboringFilesQuery): in Photos and other viewers arrow keys browse to the next/previous file, exactly as when opening from Explorer. Popup closes.
• Click a subfolder → navigate inside right in the popup; a Back button returns to the parent folder.
• Typed drag-and-drop: the data package carries multiple representations — images are additionally added as Bitmap (paste "as picture" into Paint/Word/messengers), text files as Text (paste content into an editor), and always StorageItems (files for Explorer and everything else). The receiving app picks the format it understands. Dragging moves the item (like Explorer); hold Ctrl to copy instead. After a move the popup refreshes automatically.
• Explorer context menu (right-click an item): the real system shell menu — Open with, Send to, Copy/Cut/Delete/Rename, third-party extensions (7-Zip, TortoiseGit, …) — exactly as in Explorer. The same menu is available on rows in the manager window: right-click a pinned folder to pin its shortcut to the taskbar, rename or delete it — no Explorer round-trip.
• "Open in Explorer" button.
• Click outside the window → popup closes (flyout behavior).
• Click the icon again → toggle (close).
• The manager shows only pins that still exist: shortcuts whose target folder was deleted are filtered out on every window activation.
• Updates from GitHub Releases: a "Check for updates" button and an auto-check-on-launch toggle (stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\FolderDock\settings.json). When a newer version is found, the app offers to download the installer for your architecture and runs a silent upgrade.
• Launching from the app's own shortcut (Start Menu) keeps its own taskbar identity — it never masquerades as one of the pinned folders.
• Dark/light theme — follows the system. Win11 rounded corners, always on top, hidden from Alt-Tab.
• Single-instance: repeated launches are redirected to the running instance (AppInstance redirect).

Installation

Grab FolderDock-Setup-<version>-<arch>.exe from Releases and run it. The installer lets you pick the install folder, optionally creates a Start Menu group, and silently removes a previously installed version before upgrading.

Building (on Windows)

Requirements:

• Windows 10 17763+ / Windows 11
• .NET 8 SDK
• Visual Studio 2022 with the Windows application development workload — or just the SDK + command line

Command line:

cd FolderDock
dotnet build -c Release -p:Platform=x64
# or a ready-to-run exe (self-contained, WindowsAppSDKSelfContained — no MSIX needed):
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 -p:Platform=x64

Output: bin\x64\Release\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64\publish\FolderDock.exe

WinUI 3 does not build on Linux/macOS (XamlCompiler.exe is Windows-only). Build on Windows.

Usage

1. Run FolderDock.exe with no arguments → the manager window.
2. "Add folder" → pick a folder → a shortcut is created in %LOCALAPPDATA%\FolderDock\Shortcuts.
3. Right-click the folder in the list → "Pin to taskbar" (the real Explorer shell menu — pin, rename, delete, properties without leaving the manager).
4. Click the pinned icon → a popup with the folder contents.

Pin as many folders as you like — each one gets its own icon.

Localization

UI languages: English (en-US, default), Русский (ru), Українська (uk). The language follows the Windows preferred-languages list; missing strings fall back to English.

All strings live in one file per language: Strings/<BCP-47 tag>/Resources.resw. To add a language:

1. Copy Strings/en-US/ to Strings/<your tag>/ (e.g. Strings/de-DE/).
2. Translate the <value> elements — keys must stay identical across languages.
3. Rebuild. That's it — no code changes: WinUI PRI picks the folder up automatically.

Key conventions: keys with a dot (AddFolderLabel.Text) bind to XAML elements via x:Uid; plain keys (Update_Checking) are used from code via Loc.Get/Loc.Format ({0}, {1} are placeholders — keep them in translations).

How it works

• Windows 11 does not allow pinning a folder to the taskbar directly and has no API for a "taskbar popup". Workaround: a shortcut to FolderDock.exe --folder "<path>" with System.AppUserModel.ID written into the shortcut's property store, unique per folder (SHA1 of the path). On start the process sets the same AUMID via SetCurrentProcessExplicitAppUserModelID — the taskbar matches the window to the right pinned icon. Launched without --folder, the process (and each window via SHGetPropertyStoreForWindow) uses the app's own AUMID instead.
• One background process: AppInstance.FindOrRegisterForKey + RedirectActivationToAsync. A click on any shortcut lands in the live instance → instant popup with no cold start.
• The popup is a WinUI 3 Window with OverlappedPresenter.CreateForContextMenu() (frameless), IsAlwaysOnTop, WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW (not in Alt-Tab), DWMWA_WINDOW_CORNER_PREFERENCE=ROUND. Positioned at the cursor, snapped to the top edge of the work area above the taskbar.
• Thumbnails — StorageFile.GetThumbnailAsync (the same previews as Explorer), loaded asynchronously after the window is shown.

Structure

File	Purpose
Program.cs	Entry point: single-instance, activation redirect, process AUMID
CommandLine.cs	Tokenizing --folder from arguments
App.xaml(.cs)	Activation routing: popup or manager
PopupWindow.xaml(.cs)	Popup window: UI events, toggle, back navigation
PopupChrome.cs	Window chrome: presenter, DWM, positioning, Share interop
PopupLayout.cs	Pure popup size math (constants tied to XAML templates)
ShareCoordinator.cs	Share flow: DataTransferManager, state, light-dismiss guard
FolderEntry.cs	Folder item model
FolderContents.cs	Read result: entries + access-failure flag
FolderReader.cs	Reading folder contents
ThumbnailLoader.cs	Async Explorer thumbnails (cancellable)
TypedDataPackage.cs	DataPackage: Bitmap/Text/StorageItems; sync fill for drag
ShellContextMenu.cs	Explorer shell context menu: IContextMenu/2/3, menu-message subclassing
ManagerWindow.xaml(.cs)	Manager: adding folders, creating shortcuts, filtering dead pins
PinInfo.cs	Manager list row model
AppInfo.cs	Version, build timestamp, repository URL for the UI
Localization.cs	Loc.Get/Loc.Format — access to .resw strings
Strings/<lang>/Resources.resw	UI strings per language (en-US, ru, uk)
Settings.cs	JSON settings in %LOCALAPPDATA%\FolderDock
UpdateService.cs	Update check via GitHub Releases API, installer download
ShortcutFactory.cs	COM IShellLink + IPropertyStore: .lnk with AUMID, reading args back
FolderAumid.cs	AppUserModelID from a folder path
WindowAumid.cs	Per-window AUMID via SHGetPropertyStoreForWindow
PropertyStoreInterop.cs	Shared COM types: IPropertyStore, PropertyKey, PropVariant
Shell.cs	Launching files (Photos URI / NeighboringFilesQuery) and Explorer
FileAssociation.cs	Default-app detection per extension (AssocQueryString)
Native.cs	Win32/COM: DWM, cursor, DPI, window styles, Share interop
installer/FolderDock.iss	Inno Setup script (install dir, Start Menu, MIT license, upgrade)

Limitations

• Pinning to the taskbar is manual via right-click (Windows does not allow programmatic pinning for third-party apps).
• The first click after a reboot is a cold start (~1–2 s), instant afterwards.
• The shortcut icon is the standard folder icon from imageres; you can change it in the shortcut properties.

Code signing policy

Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.

Release binaries (FolderDock.exe and the installers) are built from this repository by GitHub Actions; only CI-built artifacts are submitted to SignPath for signing. The private key is HSM-backed and held by SignPath — this project never stores it.

Team roles (single-maintainer project):

• Authors (commit access): zkelo
• Reviewers: zkelo — all external pull requests are reviewed by the maintainer before merge.
• Approvers: zkelo — each signing request requires explicit approval by the maintainer.

Privacy policy

This program will not transfer any information to other networked systems unless specifically requested by the user or the person installing or operating it. One exception: the optional update check contacts the GitHub API (api.github.com) to read the latest release version. It can be turned off in the app settings (autoCheckUpdates).

License

MIT