How to Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths in Windows 10 & 11

By Timothy Tibbetts

on 06/15/2023

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Enabling Win32 long paths will allow manifested Win32 applications and Windows Store applications to access paths beyond the normal 260 character limit per node on file systems that support it. Enabling this setting will cause the long paths to be accessible within the process.

Further information is available from Microsoft.

We can make the changes with Group Policy Editor, the Registry Editor, or using our Registry files.

If you edit the registry, be sure to back up first.

How to Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths in Windows 10 - Registry Files

Our Registry files are the easiest way to disable File History.

Download Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths and extract the two files.

Double-click Win32 long paths - Enable.reg or Win32 long paths - Disable.reg (Default).

Click Yes when prompted by User Account Control.
Click Yes when prompted by Registry Editor.

Click OK when prompted by the Registry Editor.

This tweak is included as part of MajorGeeks Windows Tweaks.

How to Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths in Windows 10 - Registry Editor

Open the Registry Editor and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

Double-click LongPathsEnabled and change the Value_data.

1 is enabled.
0 is disabled and the default.

How to Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths in Windows 10 - Group Policy Editor

Open the Group Policy Editor. Windows 10 Home users will need to enable Group Policy Editor.

Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem

Double-click on Enable Win32 long paths.

Click Enabled to enable Win32 long paths.

Click Disabled or Not configured (default) to disable Win32 long paths.

Click OK.

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