Improved navigation pane in Win 11 Pro: No more expanding and showing subfolders

archfoto · Oct 19, 2023

Ever since I was introduced to Win 11 Pro, my big complaint was that the navigation pane in file explorer kept expanding, showing subfolders on the left as well as the right as I went to the subfolders in the right-side pane, while copying files from one of my drives to another. Well, since the last update, that seems to no longer be the case. Hallelujah!! Has anyone else noticed this?

mannisp · Nov 25, 2023

Was this satire? There is an option in the settings where you could turn this feature on/off, but now after the last update that option does not work anymore. I have been trying to get the navigation pane to expand again but there seems to be no way.

Edit: I should have been more accurate, I mean the navigation pane does not work if I use Quick access pinned folders. If I open folders starting from This PC then the navigation pane works.
Is this really a desired feature??? It is very annoying and it makes Quick access useless.

archfoto · Nov 25, 2023

mannisp said:
Was this satire? There is an option in the settings where you could turn this feature on/off, but now after the last update that option does not work anymore. I have been trying to get the navigation pane to expand again but there seems to be no way.

Edit: I should have been more accurate, I mean the navigation pane does not work if I use Quick access pinned folders. If I open folders starting from This PC then the navigation pane works.
Is this really a desired feature??? It is very annoying and it makes Quick access useless.

Hi Mannisp -
Not satire. Despite the fact that I had turned off expansion in folders at the check box in folder options, up until a short time ago and an update, every time I expanded folders in the right-side pane, they also expanded in the navigation pane. It never was like that in Win 7 to Win 10. Now, I am happy to say it doesn't do that. There are still the little arrows in front of the drive letters in the navigation pane, so I can expand or compress the folders, if you or I want. I never use Quick Access pinned folders.
The auto expanding folders was an annoyance to my workflow.

mannisp · Nov 25, 2023

Oh, I did not even know it was working earlier vice versa and forcing navigation pane to always open.
Latest change made you happy but me unhappy. I wish Windows just would respect the Navigation pane setting Expand to open folder

Wisewiz · Nov 25, 2023

mannisp said:
... it makes Quick access useless.

Far from it. This right-click menu from the File explorer icon in my taskbar is by far the most used menu on my computers. It's a mirror of the Quick Access list, but I never use that list in a File Explorer window. I only preserve it so that my right-click menu is preserved.

mannisp · Nov 25, 2023

Wisewiz said:
... This right-click menu from the File explorer icon in my taskbar ...

Whaaat?! I just noticed that if I open the pinned folders using that right-click menu, and then open subfolders in right-side THEN Navigation pane opens the folder!!! But it does not work like that when I click pinned folders from File explorer, which is the way I have been always using it.
Thanks for bringing up this option, now I can use it as a workaround until the feature is corrected also from File explorer (which happens probably never...)