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Windows 10.

I have Tourette's and occasionally when moving the mouse I'll click it. Every once in a while I get unlucky and have a File Explorer window open and accidentally drag some random folder to some random place.

The only way I can really tell that this happens is I'll see the item list lose an item out of a corner of my eye, then think, "argh, not again" (I don't even want to think about how many times I didn't notice at all). Then I have to kind of hunt around to find out what I did so I can fix it, because for some reason the explorer "undo" doesn't catch moves all the time (especially when they happen in the folder pane on the left).

So my question is: Is there some way to enable a folder move confirmation dialog in Explorer? (Or if not is there some way to make the Undo feature have better coverage?) (Or maybe make it so I have to shift+drag to move or something?)

I use TeraCopy as my copy handler but afaict there's no move confirmation feature. I'm not against registry hacks or installing 3rd party software if needed, although I'd prefer not to.

To me it's an accessibility issue. I did check through the accessibility settings but I couldn't find anything helpful. I checked both the Win 10 settings and the old school Control Panel -> Ease of Access settings.

I read through Disable Drag (not drop) in the Windows Explorer Navigation Pane (thanks for the link), but the solution there isn't quite what I'm looking for, for similar reasons to why it wasn't the right solution for the OP there: My accidental drags almost always are past the threshold, and also that applies to all drag operations, which isn't really ideal.

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  • I suggest you go through the Windows 10 Accessibility settings and look here rather than trying to change Windows on your own.
    – John
    Jun 20, 2021 at 15:34
  • @John I did but I couldn't find anything. I had thought I remembered some sort of mouse click time threshold thing for twitchy people, which wouldn't be ideal but would definitely help, but I couldn't find that, either. I might have misremembered, too.
    – Jason C
    Jun 20, 2021 at 15:36
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    In Mouse Settings (Control Panel) you can control the length of time that represents a double click. That may help.
    – John
    Jun 20, 2021 at 15:39
  • @John Thanks! Incidentally, that actually might be helpful for other issues I have. Unfortunately, the folder move problem is a single-click drag issue. :/
    – Jason C
    Jun 20, 2021 at 15:40
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    The registry hasn't changed since Windows 7, but I have reopened the post.
    – harrymc
    Jun 20, 2021 at 15:59

2 Answers 2

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I managed to disable drag-and-drop only in Explorer by using the free AutoHotkey.

The following AutoHotkey script will either disable drag or convert it into rename (same as dragging the cursor over a file-name). It basically converts any left-mouse-down action into a complete left-click, so no drag can be done:

#IfWinActive, ahk_class CabinetWClass
LButton::Send, {LButton}

After installing AutoHotKey, put the above text in a .ahk file and double-click it to test. You may stop the script by right-click on the green H icon in the traybar and choosing Exit. To have it run on login, place it in the Startup group at
C:\Users\USER-NAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

Useful AutoHotkey documentation:

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  • This looks promising; I'm going to check it out and I'll report back. I also want to dig a little and see if I can make a drag require a modifier key; which would let me move things but not by accident. Thanks; I'll let you know if this works out.
    – Jason C
    Jun 20, 2021 at 16:56
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I use a program called "Drag Drop Confirm". Love it. https://github.com/broken-e/DragDropConfirm

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