Access Windows “God” Mode from Windows Subsystem for Linux

You can use the technique in the following script to access Windows “God” mode from a bash shell script running under Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). There may be a better way, preferably a command line argument to explorer.exe that does not depend on the existence of a file system directory for this purpose.

Update: It seems that GodMode may be a convention; you may be able to use whatever directory name prefix you prefer. You can see the name in the file system but not in the Windows UI. I recommend GoWindow.

To access God mode, use Windows explorer.exe to navigate to a directory named GoWindow.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}. If you create this directory on the Windows desktop, then it appears both on the desktop and at the root of explorer.exe. If you create it elsewhere, then it appears when you navigate to that file system element.

Here is a script that creates and opens such a directory on C:\.

#!/bin/sh

name=GoWindow.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

if [ ! -d /mnt/c/$name ]; then
  if [ ! -d /mnt/c ]; then
    echo /mnt/c is not a directory\; cannot create $name directory.
    exit 1
  else
    mkdir /mnt/c/$name
  fi
fi

explorer.exe "C:\\$name"