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I know this question has been asked before but I can't seem to make them work now.

I have tried:

  • Rebooting.
  • Installing latest preview release.
  • Increasing icon cache and adding quotes around the keys:

https://martinbuberl.com/blog/tortoisegit-icons-not-showing-workaround/

  • Changing the icon overlay settings.

They now refuse to display.

Here is a snapshot of the registry key items:

Shell Identifiers

Andrew Truckle
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  • Please see https://tortoisegit.org/support/faq/#ovlnotshowing – MrTux Jan 11 '17 at 10:23
  • @MrTux That made no difference. After reboot just the same. I tried swapping back from Shell Extended to Default. Still no joy. – Andrew Truckle Jan 11 '17 at 10:34
  • It's a long shot but did you add your project folder to the "Exclude paths" section under Icon Overlays or uncheck the enabled overlay handlers? – Malice Jan 11 '17 at 15:30
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    how many overlays are registered on your system? Windows only shows 15 – magicandre1981 Jan 11 '17 at 15:51
  • @magicandre1981How do I check? I have not fiddled with any overlay settings etc between today and yesterday. – Andrew Truckle Jan 11 '17 at 16:03
  • @magicandre1981 Ok, I seem to have several listed before the Tortoise ones in the list. I have just too many overlays - dropbox / onedrive / tortoise. – Andrew Truckle Jan 11 '17 at 16:44
  • @magicandre1981 Now working. But that is annoying to have to fiddle the registry. Now others won't work. What a limitation. – Andrew Truckle Jan 11 '17 at 16:49
  • yeah, say thanks to the developers at Microsoft. They have no plans to increase the limit of 15 overlays. They want to remove the overlays completely – magicandre1981 Jan 12 '17 at 16:13

2 Answers2

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From https://tortoisegit.org/support/faq/#ovlnotall:

The number of overlays allowed by Windows is limited to 15. Windows uses 4 of those, and the remaining 11 can be used by other applications. And if you have OneDrive installed, that uses another 5 slots. If you then have another cloud drive tool installed, those slots can be used up. TortoiseGit and TortoiseSVN try to be a "Good Citizen ™" and limit its use of overlays to give other apps a chance.

You can check which other apps are using overlays by using Regedit to look at

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

If there are too many overlay handlers installed and TortoiseGit does not show any overlays, you can try to delete some of the installed handlers from the registry. But be careful when editing the registry!

Deletion is sometimes a bit tricky. You can also try to prefix the Tortoise* entries with spaces and/or double quotes (").

The overlay handler are loaded by the order of the ASCII code. Thus you need to make sure the Tortoise* overlay handler has a high precedence to be honored. This can be achieved by prepending spaces (as seen in the screenshot there is a real war going on who has the most spaces).

Andrew Truckle
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MrTux
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  • I'd just like to add, since it's not immediately apparent to the eye: You can see these blank 'spaces' on the OP's screenshot infront of the Dropbox and OneDrive entries. – tno2007 Aug 07 '17 at 09:18
  • "there is a real war going on who has the most spaces" - you mean a "space war"? – bers Sep 10 '19 at 07:57
  • @bers "space war" :), not just space, I've also seen other white space characters. – MrTux Sep 10 '19 at 08:25
  • So the ones that show up under the registry key are the remaining 11 overlays after subtracting the 4 used by Windows? Plus a bunch that will never show up? – posfan12 Jan 31 '20 at 22:30
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    Also, any particular reason why there is a limit of 15? – posfan12 Jan 31 '20 at 22:35
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After none of above worked for me, I searched whole registry for 

{C5994560-53D9-4125-87C9-F193FC689CB2}

(Value of "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers\ Tortoise1Normal")

I found a key with name 

"{C5994560-53D9-4125-87C9-F193FC689CB2} {0C6C4200-C589-11D0-999A-00C04FD655E1} 0xFFFF"

inside

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Cached

So I decided to delete all subkeys of registry key 

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Cached"

and after I restarted explorer.exe all tortoise overlays started working for me

Andrew Truckle
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sur
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