FanFolder turns any folder into an animated, arc-shaped popup on the Windows
taskbar. Click the taskbar icon and the most recently modified items in a
configured folder fan out in a smooth animation. Open items, use the full
Windows shell context menu (right-click), or drag them into other applications.
Works with local folders as well as cloud-synced folders such as OneDrive,
Dropbox and Google Drive — always showing the latest files.
Key features:
- Multiple animation styles: Fan, Glide, Spring, Fade or None.
- Sort by date modified, date created or name, with optional filename regex filter.
- Configurable item count, folder path and display options via tray menu or registry.
- Full Windows shell context menu and drag-and-drop support.
- Per-user MSI install, no admin rights required.
- Native x64 and ARM64 builds.
- Small footprint and low memory usage.
README
FanFolder
Turn any folder into a beautiful animated fan on your Windows taskbar.
Pin any folder to the Windows taskbar, click it, and watch your most recent files bloom out in an animated arc — ready to open, drag, or right-click with the full Windows shell context menu.
Build: CMake + MSVC (Visual Studio 2022, C++ desktop workload)
Installer: Inno Setup, single-file FanFolderSetup.exe per architecture
Distribution: GitHub Releases + winget community repository
Source code is maintained in a private repository. This repository (FanFolder) is the public distribution channel and hosts the website, releases, and winget manifests.
Configuration
All settings are available via the registry at HKCU\SOFTWARE\FanFolder. Most common ones are also available from the tray-icon menu — the rest are registry-only (edit with regedit).
Value
Type
Default
Tray menu
Description
FolderPath
REG_SZ
Downloads
✅
Folder to display
SortMode
REG_SZ
DateModifiedDesc
✅
Sort order (DateModifiedDesc, DateModifiedAsc, DateCreatedDesc, DateCreatedAsc, NameAsc, NameDesc)
MaxItems
REG_DWORD
15
✅
Items shown in the fan (5–25)
IncludeDirectories
REG_DWORD
1
✅
Include subfolders
ShowExtensions
REG_DWORD
0
✅
Show file extensions in labels
FilterRegex
REG_SZ
(empty)
❌ registry only
Optional regex matched against each filename (case-insensitive). Only matching files are shown. See examples below.
AnimationStyle
REG_SZ
Spring
❌ registry only
Fan, Glide, Spring, Fade, or None
FilterRegex examples
Goal
Regex
Images only (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, BMP, SVG)
\.(jpe?g|png|gif|webp|bmp|svg)$
Executables / installers
\.(exe|msi|msix)$
Documents (Word, PDF, text)
\.(docx?|pdf|txt|rtf)$
Spreadsheets
\.(xlsx?|csv|ods)$
Archives
\.(zip|rar|7z|tar|gz)$
Video
\.(mp4|mov|mkv|avi|webm)$
Audio
\.(mp3|wav|flac|m4a|ogg)$
Anything starting with "Report-"
^Report-
Exclude hidden/temp files
^[^.~]
Leave the value empty to show all files.
License
FanFolder is free for personal and commercial use, forever. The source code is not public.