Colorize your Folders in Windows

Rainbow Folders is a sweat little freeware for Windows which lets you colorize selected folders. The software has a size of about 600 Kilobytes and does not need to be installed at all. Just run it from the location that you unpacked it to. The application offers a folder browser on the left side and several options to change the selected folder on the right.

You can use the color bar to select a color for the active folder, change the saturation and choose if you want to use XP style icons or not. It is furthermore possible to create a so called Hint for the folder which is a phrase that popups when you move your mouse over the folder in Windows Explorer.

This is a nice way to customize special folders in Windows. It would be possible for instance to change the color of all media folders to blue, all application folders to red and so on. This is probably a better way than to change the icon for those folders.

Update: The latest version of Rainbow Folders needs to be installed. You get the option to install a shell extension or not. You can launch the program afterwards from the start menu. Here you see a list of your root folders on the left. Browse to one or multiple folders that you want to change the coloring of, select a color that you like from the right or use the random option for inspiration, and click on the colorize button afterwards. This adds the color to the selected folders so that they become visible in Windows Explorer.

You can use the decolorize option to remove colors again from folders.  A click on options displays a couple of settings that you can use to uninstall or install the shell extension, change the program interface language, and to rebuild the system cache which you may need to do before changes become visible on the system.

The program is fully compatible with all recent versions of the Windows operating system.

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