You can specify certain locations of Writable Volumes to exclude them from being persisted across sessions. exclude_uwv_file and exclude_uwv_reg are the policy keywords that can be used for specifying exclusions in Writable Volumes.

Any content present in the location within the base image or application package is accessible, but changes to the content in these excluded locations do not persist across sessions.

You can consider these as some of the use cases for using exclude_uwv_file and exclude_uwv_reg:

  • When applications are automatically updated, multiple copies of the files might get created since the applications are also stored on the Writable Volumes. The existing applications then either do not behave as desired or stop working completely.

    To prevent this behavior, you can apply Writable Volumes exclusions to specific locations and registry paths.

  • If there are locations with large unwanted content, such as temporary downloads folder, adding Writable Volume exclusions helps in cleaning up the unwanted content within the Writable Volume.
Important: The Writable Volumes exclusions feature is for advanced IT administrators or users who are aware of the application behavior with App Volumes and want to tweak the way applications are managed or how Writable Volumes are used with application packages.

Other policy keywords such as exclude_path and exclude_reg can also be used for specifying exclusions. For more information about these keywords, see Policy Files (snapvol.cfg).