Using Windows 7’s “God Mode”
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God Mode. Sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it? In reality, it’s a secret folder that provides access to close to 300 separate configuration settings in Windows 7. That makes God Mode a way to do just about everything you can do within the regular Control Panel—but in one single place.
What is God Mode?
I wrote an entire book about customizing Windows 7. (It’s called Windows 7 Your Way, and you can buy a copy on this site or wherever computer books are sold.) But one thing I didn’t talk about in the book, because it wasn’t known at the time I wrote it, is something that insiders are calling “God Mode.” I wish I knew about it then; it’s a really cool way to help customize just about everything there is to customize in Windows 7.
Despite its name, God Mode really isn’t a mode at all. It’s a special shell folder that you create that houses shortcuts to 270-some Windows configuration settings. (The number of available settings varies a bit from system to system.) Each setting is presented as an individual control panel, so what you essentially create is a master Windows 7 Control Panel, containing all available settings.
When you create the God Mode folder, you get a single place to configure every possible Windows setting. It’s more convenient than the default Control Panel, as everything is accessible from a single level; nothing’s hidden. You don’t have to go clicking through multiple levels to find that one specific setting you want.
God Mode was designed to work in Windows 7, and it does, for all different versions, both 32-bit and 64-bit. The trick is also said to work in 32-bit versions of Windows Vista, but not in Vista’s 64-bit versions. (It’ll cause 64-bit Vista systems to crash.)
By the way, God Mode isn’t the official name, but rather what all the tweakers online are calling it. It’s actually called the All Tasks mode, and was originally designed to be part of the official Windows 7 release. As Windows 7 went through beta testing, however, the powers that be decided not to expose the All Tasks feature, which makes God Mode one of the best hidden secrets in Windows 7 today.
Activating God Mode
To activate God Mode, all you have to do is create a new folder and give it a specific name. Here’s how to do it:
- Open the Start menu and launch either the Documents or Computer folder.
- Navigate to where you want to create and store the God Mode folder.
- Click the New Folder button.
- Name the new folder GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.
You’ll now see an icon for the God Mode (GodMode) folder (see Figure 1). Double-click the icon to open the folder and start using God Mode.
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Figure 1 The icon for a newly-created GodMode folder.
By the way, you don’t have to name the folder “GodMode;” you can name it anything you like. So if you want to create a folder called “MySuperDuperCustomizationFolder,” just replace the “GodMode” text (before the period) with that, instead.