C# Get the Windows Explore Path which has the focus

Question

I would like to get the Path of the windows which has the focus.

Ex: I have 3 windows Opened
a. C:\Windows
b. C:\Windows\System32
c. C:\Users\COMP-0\Documents

And i am working on c (C:\Users\COMP-0\Documents)

So i would like to get this path (C:\Users\COMP-0\Documents) programmatically in C#.

Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8292953/get-current-selection-in-windowsexplorer-from-a-c-sharp-application or http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3382946/get-selected-items-of-folder-with-winapi/ — John, Dec 21 '14 at 14:10

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

Expanding on this answer to get the selected files in a folder, you can use a similar approach to get the current folder and therefore it's path.

This needs some COM and requires:

Getting the active window using GetForegroundWindow
Find the current list of InternetExplorer windows using SHDocVw.ShellWindows,
Matching handle pointers to find the current window
Getting hold of the folder path inside the active window using the IShellFolderViewDual2 COM interface.

There are a couple of caveats to be aware of:

Special folders (Favourites, My Computer etc) will give you the file path as "::{GUID}" where the GUID points to the CLSID for that folder in the registry. It is probably possible to convert that value to a path.
Going to "Desktop" will return null for the current folder
Focussing Internet Explorer will trigger a match on the active window so we need to ensure we are in a Shell Folder

If in a special folder or Desktop this code will just return the current window title - usually the name of the special folder - using the details in this answer.

private static string GetActiveExplorerPath()
{
    // get the active window
    IntPtr handle = GetForegroundWindow();

    // Required ref: SHDocVw (Microsoft Internet Controls COM Object) - C:\Windows\system32\ShDocVw.dll
    ShellWindows shellWindows = new SHDocVw.ShellWindows();

    // loop through all windows
    foreach (InternetExplorer window in shellWindows)
    {
        // match active window
        if (window.HWND == (int)handle)
        {
            // Required ref: Shell32 - C:\Windows\system32\Shell32.dll
            var shellWindow = window.Document as Shell32.IShellFolderViewDual2;

            // will be null if you are in Internet Explorer for example
            if (shellWindow != null)
            {
                // Item without an index returns the current object
                var currentFolder = shellWindow.Folder.Items().Item();

                // special folder - use window title
                // for some reason on "Desktop" gives null
                if (currentFolder == null || currentFolder.Path.StartsWith("::"))
                {
                    // Get window title instead
                    const int nChars = 256;
                    StringBuilder Buff = new StringBuilder(nChars);
                    if (GetWindowText(handle, Buff, nChars) > 0)
                    {
                        return Buff.ToString();
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    return currentFolder.Path;
                }
            }

            break;
        }
    }

    return null;
}

// COM Imports

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
private static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern int GetWindowText(IntPtr hWnd, StringBuilder text, int count);

C# Get the Windows Explore Path which has the focus

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