What's new in this version of Folder Guard

Version 24.11 (November 10, 2024)

This update corrects a problem that in some situations could cause a BSOD during OS startup.

Version 24.10 (October 1, 2024)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

You can now use Folder Guard to block programs from starting while the protection of Folder Guard is in effect.
A new option Block programs for trusted users has been added that controls whether trusted users are allowed to start the blocked programs.
The items on the Trusted list can now be selected using the check marks.
A problem that prevented the use of the Options view when a language other than English was selected has been corrected.
Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 24.8 (August 26, 2024)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

The ghost folders can now be password-protected. (However, such folders must be specified using exact paths, masks are not supported.)
The simple masks for restricting access and visibility of the ghost folders can now contain star characters at the end of each path component.
Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 23.5 (May 3, 2023)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

The filters can now be applied not only to files, but also to subfolders.
It's now possible to set up restrictions for the ghost folders and files, allowing you to set up restrictions in advance, for the files or folders that do not exist yet.
The ghost folders and files can be specified using the simple masks, allowing you to restrict more than one folder or file, if their names match the simple mask of the ghost item.
Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 23.2 (February 22, 2023)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

A new command Pause for local accounts has been added.
New command line options PAUSE_LOCAL and RESUME_LOCAL has been added.
A new, more user-friendly task selector for trusted programs and filters has been implemented.
A problem has been corrected that caused the Unlock button not to appear in the password-protected folders in some situations.
Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 22.12 (December 19, 2022)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

When creating or changing a password that is too short, Folder Guard now displays a warning and offers to choose a longer password;
The Ukrainian language has been added.
Several minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 22.10 (October 24, 2022)

The digital signatures of the executable files have been updated according to the latest security requirements of Windows 11 and Windows 10.

Version 22.9 (September 20, 2022)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

When a shortcut is chosen to be protected with Folder Guard, the user is now prompted to select whether to protect the shortcut itself or the target;
The reparse points can now be protected with Folder Guard, too;
When enabling or disabling the stealth mode, the visibility of the taskbar notification icon of Folder Guard is now controlled automatically, too, along with other Folder Guard shortcuts;
Several minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 22.8 (August 11, 2022)

This update corrects a problem that in some cases prevented the items set to be 'visible' under a folder set to appear empty from being actually visible in File Explorer.

Version 22.5 (May 5, 2022)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

A new option has been added to record the file system events in a log file for troubleshooting purposes;
Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 22.3 (March 3, 2022)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

Native support for the ARM 64-bit processor architecture has been implemented;
New command line switches have been added: /SILENT and /VERBOSE;
Several minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 21.4 (April 17, 2021)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

The temporary passwords with expiration dates can now be used to pause the protection or unlock the pasword-protected folders.

Several minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 20.10.3 (October 22, 2020)

This update corrects a problem that was causing system crashes in some situations.

Version 20.10 (October 10, 2020)

This update corrects a problem that was causing crashes in some situations with third-party storage solutions used alongside of Folder Guard.

Version 20.9 (September 25, 2020)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

The Traditional Chinese language has been added to the list of the available languages.

Several minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 20.1 (January 21, 2020)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

The Catalan language has been added to the list of the available languages.

The Trusted Programs list can now contain masks to specify classes of the paths that should be trusted.

The Trusted Programs list can now contain UNC paths specifying programs located on other network computers.

A problem has been corrected that prevented paths longer than 64 characters to be added to the Trusted Programs list.

If Folder Guard is installed using an MSI package from the Administrator's Kit, it is now prevented from being uninstalled by the end user via the Control Panel. (It can still be uninstalled via the Group Policy or by running the msiexec utility.)

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 19.9 (September 30, 2019)

This update offers several performance improvements that make certain system backup operations faster.

Version 19.7 (July 10, 2019)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

A problem has been corrected that prevented Folder Guard from working properly when a very large number of different folders were configured to be protected.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 19.6 (June 21, 2019)

This update offers a correction that should prevent system crashes that could occur in some situations when browsing to the network locations protected with Folder Guard.

Version 19.5 (May 21, 2019)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

A new option, Report events to Windows Event Log, has been added to the Options view of Folder Guard.

A problem has been corrected that prevented some domain users added to the Trusted list to be treated as trusted users.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 19.4 (April 4, 2019)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

Each password-protected folder can now have an unlimited number of different passwords. (Previously, the limit was 4 passwords per folder.)

A new command, Lock all unlocked shared folders, has been added to the right-click menu of the notification icon of Folder Guard.

The text of the command Locked all unlocked folders on the main prompt of Folder Guard has been changed to Lock all folders I've unlocked to better reflect the scope of this command.

A problem has been corrected that in some situations, when unlocking a shared folder from another computer, caused Folder Guard to report that protection was not enabled on the remote computer.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 18.7 (July 30, 2018)

This is a security update that corrects a problem that could allow an attacker to manipulate the contents of the configuration file of Folder Guard (while the protection is paused or disabled) to cause a crash of the system.

Version 18.5 (May 12, 2018)

This update corrects a problem introduced in version 18.4 that in some situations caused the contents of the subfolders of the protected folders to remain hidden even after the correct password had been provided when unlocking the folder.

Version 18.4 (April 23, 2018)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

The Korean language has been added to the available translations of Folder Guard.

A problem has been corrected that in some situations allowed the user to delete files protected with a read-only filter.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 18.3.1 (March 30, 2018)

This update offers several improvements and corrections:

A problem has been corrected that in some situations prevented the user from being able to change Folder Guard settings on a computer with a disabled User Account Control.

The precedure of cleaning the history lists of Windows Explorer has been improved.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 18.1 (January 3, 2018)

This is a maintenance update that contains several minor improvements and corrections.

Version 17.7 (July 31, 2017)

This release offers several important improvements, such as:

If you are a system administrator of a large network, you can now use Folder Guard to edit Group Policy Objects (GPO) directly, to configure the protection of the network computers using Group Policy and Active Directory.

The Trusted Programs and Trusted Users screens have been replaced with a unified Trusted view.

The protection options have been separated from the program settings and are now controlled using the Options view.

You can now select a custom font to be used in the Folder Guard views.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Note that with this update we are changing the version numbering to the "Ubuntu" style. For example, version 17.7 means it was released in July of 2017.

Version 10.4.1 (May 20, 2017)

This update adds the Arabic language translation to Folder Guard 10.4.

It also corrects an error that could cause Folder Guard to crash on a computer with a misconfigured Windows Search functionality.

Version 10.4 (May 5, 2017)

This update offers several improvements to Folder Guard 10, such as:

The language of the user interface of Folder Guard can now be changed directly, without the need to install a different language version.

A new option has been added that allows you to choose whether to show or hide the Unlock buttons on the password-protected folders. If you choose not to display such buttons, you can still unlock the password-protected folders by using the right-click menu, for example.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 10.3 (January 12, 2017)

This update offers several minor improvements and corrections.

Version 10.2 (October 21, 2016)

This update enables the use of Folder Guard 10 on clean installations of Windows 10 build 1607 and Windows Server 2016 with Secure Boot enabled.

Version 10.1 (August 21, 2016)

This update offers several improvements to Folder Guard 10, such as:

The user interface of the Folder Guard application has been translated to several languages other than English.

When a user locks a password protected folder, Folder Guard now sends a notification to Windows Search. After receiving such a notification, Windows Search is expected to remove the information about the files located in the protected folder from its index, so they would not appear in the search results.

A problem has been corrected that in certain situations caused the option to clear the File Explorer history after a password-protected folder was locked to be applied incorrectly.

Several other minor improvements and corrections have been made.

Version 10.0 (May 15, 2016)

This is a major update that adds many new features and capabilities to Folder Guard, such as:

The ability to password-protect the shared folders.

The ability to protect access to the network drives and folders.

Password-protected folders can now have more than one password, with different properties.

The stealth-mode is improved to allow the control of the protection via the hot key, in addition to the emergency recovery utility.

Many subtle changes under the hood improving the functionality of Folder Guard.

Version 9.1 (August 27, 2013)

This is a minor update that corrects a few minor problems reported by the users of the previous version.

Version 9.0 (April 20, 2013)

This is a major upgrade offering many changes, with the goal to make it easier to set up the protection and reduce possible confusion over the many options that Folder Guard offers. Here are the most significant changes from the previous versions 8.x:

The user interface has been updated, that will hopefully make Folder Guard even easier to use than before.

The Permissions command has been removed. If you used this command in the previous version, you may want to use the Group Policy and Local Security Policy commands of Windows instead.

The Trusted Programs list now uses the full path to the program's file to determine whether it should be trusted. With this change, if you have added a custom trusted program to the list in the previous version, you will need to add it again, using its full path.

The protection of the folders on the mapped network drives is no longer offered. If you relied on this feature in the previous version of Folder Guard, you may want to use the built-in network security of Windows to control access to the network drives.

Folder Guard now automatically handles the proper access to the desktop.ini files of the protected folders, to preserve the custom icons and other customizations of the folders, if any.

Folder Guard no longer supports the pre-Windows XP versions of Windows (such as Windows 2000 and earlier).

In order to use the filters of Folder Guard, you must now purchase a full (business) license. If you purchase a personal/home use license only, the filters will have no effect.

Many other improvements and corrections have been made.