How to Customise Folder Colours and Starred Items in Google Drive to Organise Projects

As team projects, personal documents, and shared client assets accumulate in cloud storage, navigating through endless rows of identical grey folders becomes sluggish and disorienting. Implementing custom folder colours Google Drive styling, paired with starred bookmarks and shortcuts, transforms a chaotic cloud drive into an intuitive, visually prioritised workspace.

Why Customise Folder Colours in Google Drive?

Visual colour coding reduces cognitive load by establishing immediate cognitive signposts across complex directory trees. Applying distinct palette tones allows you to:

• Assign specific brand colours to key client deliverables or corporate departments.
• Distinguish high-priority active initiatives (e.g., vibrant red or amber) from long-term archives (e.g., cool slate or grey).
• Identify personal directories instantly when browsing within shared enterprise domains.
• Navigate nested folder hierarchies faster on both desktop web browsers and mobile apps.

How to Change Folder Colours on the Web

Google Drive provides a 24-colour palette built directly into the web interface context menu:

1. Open Google Drive (drive.google.com) in your web browser.
2. Locate the folder you wish to customise in My Drive or within a shared directory.
3. Right-click the folder (or click the three vertical dots menu icon next to the folder title).
4. Hover your cursor over the Organise option in the context menu.
5. Move your mouse over the Folder colour flyout palette.
6. Click any of the 24 available colour swatches (such as Denim, Spearmint, Tangerine, or Eggplant).

The folder icon immediately updates to your selected colour across both the main grid/list view and the left-hand navigation sidebar.

How to Change Folder Colours on Android, iPhone, and iPad

You can also assign and update folder colour codes from mobile devices:

1. Launch the Google Drive app on your smartphone or tablet.
2. Tap the Files tab located in the bottom navigation bar.
3. Find the target folder and tap the three dots icon (…) beside its name.
4. Select Change colour from the bottom action sheet.
5. Tap your desired colour swatch from the grid to apply the change instantly.

Do Custom Folder Colours Sync with Collaborators?

A crucial rule to remember when collaborating in Google Drive: Folder colour changes are private to your individual account.

When you change the colour of a shared folder in My Drive, collaborators will continue to see their own default grey folder (or whatever custom colour they personally chose). This intentional design prevents teammates from overwriting each other’s visual organisation schemes, giving you full freedom to colour-code shared team repositories according to your personal workflow.

Using Starred Items for Instant Bookmarks

Complementing folder colours with the Starred feature creates a fast shortcut system for high-frequency files:

1. Right-click any folder, spreadsheet, document, or PDF in Google Drive.
2. Select Organise > Add to Starred (or press the S key on your keyboard while selecting the item).
3. A solid star icon appears alongside the item’s name.
4. Click the Starred category in Google Drive’s left sidebar to view all marked items in a clean, isolated list, bypassing deep directory trees entirely.

Creating Google Drive Shortcuts for Cross-Folder Organisation

Rather than duplicating files across multiple coloured folders (which consumes additional storage and creates version fragmentation), utilise Google Drive Shortcuts:

1. Select any document or file.
2. Press Shift + Z (or right-click and choose Organise > Add shortcut).
3. Select the destination coloured folder in your directory tree.

Shortcuts act as lightweight pointers, allowing a single master file to reside inside multiple project folders while preserving a single source of truth.