Bypass 260 characters pathname limit in Windows 10

Last Updated on October 5, 2016

The overly annoying 260 character limit for pathname is finally avoidable. What I am talking about is the irritating message that goes like The file name is too long. Or the Source path too long or the Path is too deep.

This error message pops up when the length of a location becomes larger than 260 characters. If you still don’t understand it, take a look at the error message below.

The official help doc also says the same thing as you can read below:

Enabling Win32 (NTFS) long paths will allow manifested win32 applications and Windows Store applications to access paths beyond the normal 260 character limit per node on file systems that support it.  Enabling this setting will cause the long paths to be accessible within the process.

To bypass this limit, you can use the Registry editor, or the Group policy editor and enable the Long file paths for Windows. Of course, this feature is opt-in, and that’s why this you have to manually edit the registry for enabling it. Continue reading below for the instructions.

Enable Long File Paths from Registry Editor

• Press Windows key + r to open Run. Here, type regedit and press enter to open the Registry editor.
• In the registry editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem.
• Once FileSystem is highlighted, double-click on the LongPathsEnabled key.
• Set it’s value to 1 from 0 and click OK.
• Close everything and restart your PC.

Alternatively, you can copy the code written below into a notepad and use it for changing the registry key.

For doing that, open notepad and paste the code written below in it. Now, save that file as bypass_character_limit.reg on the Desktop. Open the file and accept the confirmation to add the value to the registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem] "LongPathsEnabled"=dword:00000001

You can also use Group policy editor to make set bypass the 260 character limit on Windows 10.

Enable Long File Paths from Group Policy Editor

• Press Windows key + r to open Run. Here, type gpedit.msc and press enter to open the Group Policy Editor.
• Once opened, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem > Enable NTFS long paths. Instead of Enable NTFS long paths, you could also have Enable Win32 long paths in the Filesystem folder. Both are similar. Use what you have on your system.
• Double-click on it, and set it to Enabled.
• Close the Group Policy Editor and restart your PC.