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I was playing the solitaire they added back in Windows 10 and when I closed it I noticed there were these green checkmarks on my Desktop icons:

desktop with checkmarks

What are these green checkmarks on my desktop? How do I get rid of them?

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    Do you use any Norton software?
    – MC10
    Commented Aug 15, 2015 at 21:54
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    What about source control?
    – Joel Coehoorn
    Commented Aug 15, 2015 at 22:00
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    It would appear you are trying to reply to comments and asnwers from another account. In order to edit, comment on and accept answers to this question you will need to merge your accounts. Go to the contact form and select "I need to merge accounts".
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Aug 15, 2015 at 23:08
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    Can confirm, I have OneDrive but not Norton and am seeing this. Refreshing made them vanish.
    – flith
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 5:35

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Apparently the checkmarks may have been added by Microsoft OneDrive. (Source)

Another cause can be Norton backup flagging the files as backed up.

Pressing F5 or right clicking the desktop and choosing 'Refresh' should get rid of the checkmarks. (Source)

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    Odd and sad, but yes, a right-click on an empty place on the desktop and selecting "Refresh" in the context menu got rid of the green check overlays for me. Thanks!
    – pettys
    Commented Jan 4, 2016 at 21:43
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    I don't know the reason but this has nothing to do with Norton or OneDrive. I dont have Norton's software, and I literally removed all the OneDrive packages, services and functionalities from Windows 10 ISO through NTLite. Other different thing is causing these green checkmarks to appear on shortcut files on the desktop. It happened to me while using Visual Studio 2017, not sure when, or how, but I only was using Visual Studio and no other program. Note that I use Visual Studio every day since years ago and this is the first time I see these green checkmarks... it is very strange.
    – ElektroStudios
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 2:54
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    By the way, an affected user can just press F5 key once to refresh the desktop icons, instead of doing additional steps with the mouse. Or at least that is all what I needed to do in order to get rid of those green checkmarks.
    – ElektroStudios
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 2:59
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    A decoder for OneDrive's little symbols, including green checks, is here, support.office.com/en-ie/article/… .
    – KAE
    Commented Apr 12, 2019 at 18:43
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I have found a different solution for this problem.

I had this problem too, but I don't have Norton nor One Drive. So i looked further. On the Microsoft forum I found a simple trick that worked for me.

If you right click on an empty space on the desktop and then 'refresh' the green check marks will disappear

It only seemed to affect the desktop shortcuts, nothing else. For more details you can read the article on the microsoft forum what is include in this post.

Link to Microsoft forum

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    this should be marked as correct. i also don't have norton or one drive and this worked for me.
    – Jason
    Commented Aug 3, 2019 at 19:21
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Rebuilding the icon cache solved the problem permanently for me.

Rebuild Icon Cache in Windows 10 | Tutorials

Option 2: To Rebuild the Icon Cache in the Command Prompt

  1. Close and save anything that you are working on before proceeding. The next steps will involve killing explorer and restarting the PC.

  2. Open a command prompt.

  3. Copy and paste each command below one at a time into the command prompt, and press Enter after each command.

Warning

The last command will instantly restart the PC.

 ie4uinit.exe -show 

 taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F 

 DEL /A /Q "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" 

 DEL /A /F /Q "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*" 

 shutdown /r /f /t 00
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