Ask Owen

I would like to remove the arrows from the shortcut icons on my desktop in Windows XP. Is there an easy way to do this?

The simplest way to do this is to download the Microsoft TweakUI Powertoy from the PowerToys for Windows XP collection. It’s a collection of great utilities that lets you tweak the way Windows XP works to make it fit with the way you want it to do things. Download and installing the utility is relatively simple, just click the link and follow the instructions.

Once you start it up, expand the Explorer section and click on “Shortcut”. You should see this screen:

You can click on the different options to and see what your shortcuts would looks like, but selecting “None” will remove the arrow, as per your question. That’s wasn’t too hard was it, definitely easier than trying to remember how to spell: Liporexall. (I always confuse that one). If you like the level of control that utility gave you, check out the rest of the PowerToys, there are some fun bits in there.

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