In a recent update to Windows 11, Microsoft introduced a new “Gallery” feature integrated directly into File Explorer. Pinned permanently to the left-hand navigation pane right below the Home button, clicking Gallery aggregates all the images from your local Pictures folder and your OneDrive cloud storage into a single, smartphone-style timeline view.
While this is nice for casual photo viewing, many power users and professionals find it completely useless. Worse, it takes up prime real estate in the navigation pane and cannot be unpinned by simply right-clicking it. If you want to remove Gallery and reclaim your File Explorer sidebar, you must use the Registry Editor.
How to Remove “Gallery” from the File Explorer Sidebar
You must delete a specific registry key associated with the Gallery shell folder to hide it from the UI.
- Click the Start button, type regedit, and press Enter to open the Registry Editor. (Confirm the User Account Control prompt).
- Before making changes, back up your registry: click File > Export and save a copy to your desktop.
- Navigate to the following path using the left-hand folder tree:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID - Right-click on the CLSID folder, select New > Key.
- Name this new key exactly: {e88865ea-0e1c-4e20-9aa6-edcd0212c87c} (Be sure to include the curly brackets).
- Right-click on your newly created
{e88865ea...}folder, select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value. - Name this new value exactly: System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree
- Double-click the
System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTreevalue. Ensure the “Value data” is set to 0. Click OK.
Close the Registry Editor. Open Task Manager, locate “Windows Explorer” in the processes list, right-click it, and select Restart. When File Explorer reloads, the Gallery icon will be completely gone from your left-hand navigation pane.