files-community / files-community/Files

Feature: Add comments to folders (discussion)

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C#
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Description

### What feature or improvement do you think would benefit Files?

I have been thinking about writing a software that would let me "annotate" my folders in Windows. Maybe it means when you hover over a folder, the tooltip shows what you've written. Or maybe it's a (hidden) markdown file like README.MD is for GitHub that autorenders in the details pane. If searchable, all the better. I could say "This folder is a legacy folder and can be ignored" or "This is a monorepo and must be initialized properly on other machines when cloned"

Secondly, I have recently restructured some folders so that all my GitHub repos are now within project folders they are associated with rather than dumped all together in one Repositories folder. This change has pros and cons, but I would love for folders detected to have .git in them to optionally be displayed as Repository folders with a special icon. And that made me think: What about all sorts of folder iconography schema that can be autoapplied? Maybe you can associate a specific tag with a folder icon or automation rule. I know you can change icons manually, but I can already do that in plain old Windows Explorer.

This leads me to just thinking an overall folder metadata/customization feature would be great. Something I like about how Google Drive manages files is that it keeps track of files and folders as guids and then puts shortcuts to them everywhere rather than duplicating data when things move around. This is great because regardless of where things get moved to, you can attach them to specific records in various systems. If you bork your GDrive folder structure? Doesn't matter. Anything that referenced that file/folder still has access to it by ID. It works great in a web browser, less so on a hard drive. If folders are identifiable by ID and settings, could recreate that flexibility.

Companies would love it. Their on-prem shared drives could basically organize themselves like OneDrive or Google Drive and they could leave notes (along with the already built-in function of tagging that they could use for project names or whatever).

### Requirements

Alright I went a little overboard with those ideas but the gist of the request:

1. Allow folder icon change automation rules
2. Allow more metadata than tags to be stored with a folder, such as markdown descriptions

- This proposal will improve readability of folder structure by allowing searchable annotations for what a project is as well as custom icons

### Files Version

3.6.0.0

### Windows Version

10.0.22631.4037

### Comments

Love the app, it's so good. :)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

The issue mentions no source files, tests, or entry points. Start by narrowing the discussion into a bounded proposal, choosing whether the first scope is folder annotations, icon automation, or repository detection. Done should be defined by the selected requirements, including how metadata is stored and searched.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
git
Domain
desktop, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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