Folder Colors

Colour-code Windows 11 folders by category from the right-click menu, or let Claude do it for you.

Twenty folder icons, each tied to a category you can rename. Right-click a folder, pick "Folder Color...", click "Clients", and the folder turns light blue. The category name also lands in the folder's Tags and Categories, so Explorer can show, sort and group by it. The mapping lives in one JSON file. Four Claude Code skills ship with it, as a plugin: folder-colors colours one folder on request, auto-color colours a whole tree or a project at once, tidy-folder brings order inside one folder (with a strict, sourced finance profile), and organize-pc turns "organise my PC" into a proposal table you approve, numbered areas with a README each, and a map of the machine any LLM reads first.

Install

Built and tested on Windows 11. Windows 10 uses the same registry and desktop.ini mechanisms but has not been tested. No admin rights needed.

git clone https://github.com/Ramonvdo/folder-colors.git
cd folder-colors
.\install.ps1

Keep the folder where it is: the menu points at the scripts and icons inside it. If you move it later, run .\install.ps1 again.

Downloaded the zip instead of cloning? Same three steps, from inside the extracted folder. If PowerShell refuses to run the script, right-click install.ps1, choose Properties and tick Unblock, or run powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1.

Use

From Explorer

Right-click any folder and pick "Folder Color...". A palette opens at the cursor with every category, grouped; the folder's current colour is outlined. Click a tile to apply it, "Reset to default" to put the plain yellow folder back, Esc or a click elsewhere to cancel. The palette takes about a second to appear (it is a PowerShell window). On the Windows 11 default menu the entry sits under "Show more options" (or press Shift+F10).

From PowerShell

.\Set-FolderColor.ps1 -List                                   # the 20 categories
.\Set-FolderColor.ps1 -Path 'D:\Clients\Acme' -Category Clients
.\Set-FolderColor.ps1 -Path 'D:\Clients\Acme' -Color 'Light Blue'   # same thing
.\Set-FolderColor.ps1 -Path 'D:\Clients\Acme' -Get            # what is it now?
.\Set-FolderColor.ps1 -Path 'D:\Clients\Acme' -Reset

The icon changes straight away, in open Explorer windows too.

Tags and Categories

Colouring a folder also writes the category name into the folder's Tags and Categories properties. Add the Tags column in Explorer (right-click a column header) to see it, sort on it, or use View > Group by > Tags. Tags a folder already had are kept; Reset removes only the one this tool added. Windows Search does not index folder tags, so tags:Finance in the search box only finds files. Set "writeTags": false in categories.json to turn this off.

Customise

Everything is in categories.json:

{
  "menuLabel": "Folder Color",
  "writeTags": true,
  "groups": ["Work", "Personal", "Status"],
  "categories": [
    { "index": 12, "color": "Light Blue", "category": "Clients", "group": "Work",
      "description": "One folder per client or customer", "hints": ["client", "customer"] },
    ...
  ]
}

• Rename a category, move it to another group, or reorder them: the palette reads the file every time it opens, so there is nothing to re-run. Folders you already coloured keep their colour: the folder stores the icon index, and the name lives only in the palette.
• description shows as the tile's tooltip; hints are read by the Claude skill when it sorts folders. Add words in your own language there (factuur, Rechnung) so files get recognised the way you name them.
• Why a palette and not a submenu: Explorer allows 16 entries in a cascading menu, nested entries included, and 20 categories plus Reset do not fit.

Use it with Claude Code

The repo is a Claude Code plugin with four skills. Two ways to get them:

# Plugin (any machine): one marketplace, one install, all four skills
claude plugin marketplace add Ramonvdo/folder-colors
claude plugin install folder-colors@folder-colors

# Developer path: link the checkout's skills into ~\.claude\skills as junctions
.\install.ps1 -LinkSkills

Both routes need the checkout for the right-click menu (install.ps1 registers it and records where the checkout is, so the skills find the scripts from anywhere). Other agents that read AGENTS.md (Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Gemini CLI) find the same skills through it.

folder-colors (skills\folder-colors) colours and tags one folder:

• "Colour D:\Clients\Acme as a client folder."
• "Rename the Marketing category to Content."

auto-color (skills\auto-color) colours many existing folders at once, nothing moves:

• "Colour-code everything in D:\Projects." One table, one yes.
• "Colour this workspace." src, docs, tests, assets get their colours; the desktop.ini files go into .git\info\exclude, so git status stays clean.
• "Which folders have no colour yet?"

tidy-folder (skills\tidy-folder) brings order inside one folder:

• "Tidy this folder." Loose files grouped into a few subfolders by topic or type, names normalised to YYYY-MM-DD_Type_Name, each as its own undoable batch.
• "Set up my finance folder" or "file these invoices." The finance profile asks where the business is tax-resident first, then files by year and document type with names read from the documents themselves (2026-02-04_Invoice_Acme_2026-0142.pdf). The Netherlands is the worked example, cited to the tax authority; other countries get a template of what to look up, and nothing is assumed. Sources in skills\tidy-folder\references\sources.md.

organize-pc (skills\organize-pc) structures the machine and keeps it that way:

• "Organise my PC." A short interview, a read-only inventory of the roots you choose, then a proposal table: numbered areas (01_CLIENTS, 04_FINANCE, 99_ARCHIVE, ...), each with a colour and a tag, and a target for every existing folder and stray file. Nothing moves until you approve the table. Every move is logged and can be undone as a batch. Each area gets a 00_README.md (its rules, in the folder itself) and the machine gets a PC-MAP.md in your profile that any LLM reads first.
• "Tidy my Downloads." Files get a place according to the map and the READMEs; Storage Sense can be set to delete what sits in Downloads untouched for 14 days. That rule is Windows deleting files on a schedule: it is off unless you say yes to it.
• "Where do client invoices go?" Answered from the READMEs, with the rule quoted.
• "How is my PC doing?" The health table: transit folders, drift, stale areas, missing READMEs, missing colours.
• "Undo the last reorganisation."

It asks before it changes anything, every time, and it starts every run by looking for opportunities to put to you as questions ("no finance folder for this business, want one set up?") rather than acting on them. Your own layout counts as a preset: adopt mode keeps your folder names and only adds colours, READMEs and the map if you say so. Folders with a .git, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, a build file or an Obsidian vault inside are workspaces: moved whole if at all, never rearranged inside.

The map keeps itself honest: skills\organize-pc\scripts\Update-PcMap.ps1 rewrites its auto section from the real folders (new folders you made by hand show up as unmapped), and can be registered as a daily task. The doctrine behind the layout is in skills\organize-pc\references\principles.md; the starting layouts (a business one, a value-chain one, and PARA) with their sources in presets.md and sources.md.

Uninstall

.\uninstall.ps1

Removes the menu. Coloured folders keep their icons for as long as this folder exists; run .\Set-FolderColor.ps1 -Path <folder> -Reset on any you want plain again.

How it works

• Windows lets a folder pick its own icon through a hidden desktop.ini. The script writes one pointing at icon n inside assets\Windows_11_coloured_icons.icl, then applies it through SHGetSetFolderCustomSettings, the same call Properties > Customize uses, which is what makes open Explorer windows repaint at once. A desktop.ini that is already there (a folder-type template, a folder picture, an icon you set through Properties) is kept: only the icon lines change, and "Reset to default" restores the icon and attributes the folder had before.
• The menu entry is a single key under HKCU\Software\Classes\Directory\shell. It runs run-hidden.vbs, which starts Pick-FolderColor.ps1 without a console window; the palette calls Set-FolderColor.ps1 with the index you clicked. Errors show up in a message box.
• Tags and Categories are the standard folder properties Explorer reads from desktop.ini (the {F29F85E0-...} and {D5CDD502-...} property-set sections).
• Nothing phones home and no administrator rights are involved. Nothing runs in the background either, unless you register the optional daily map refresh from organize-pc. See SECURITY.md.

Licence and credits

The scripts, skill and documentation are MIT (see LICENSE).

The icon pack is Windows 11 coloured folder icons by ABS96, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 and included unmodified. That licence, not MIT, applies to the .icl file: credit the author, no commercial use, no modifications. Details in NOTICE.md.

The right-click idea comes from nazsa13/Windows11-Folder-Colors. This is a rewrite: per-user install with no admin prompt, no manual path editing, a category layer with tags, a palette instead of a capped submenu, a Claude skill, and an immediate icon refresh.