With the client drive redirection feature, you can share folders and drives on the local client system with remote desktops and published applications.

Shared drives can include mapped drives and USB storage devices. Mapped drives can have UNC (Universal Naming Convention) paths.

The maximum length of a shared folder name is 117 characters.

The client drive redirection feature does not support sharing Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and enterprise file storage.

In a Windows remote desktop, shared folders and drives appear in the This PC folder or in the Computer folder, depending on the Windows operating system version. In a published application, such as Notepad, you can browse to and open a file in a shared folder or drive.

You can also turn on the ability to open local files in published applications directly from the local file system. With this feature, the Open with menu on the client system lists the available published applications when you right-click a local file.

You can also set files to be opened automatically in published applications when you double-click the file. With this feature, all files on your local file system that have certain file extensions are registered with the server that you are logged in to. For example, if Microsoft Word is a published application on the server, you can right-click a .docx file on your local file system and open the file with the Microsoft Word published application.

The client drive redirection settings apply to all remote desktops and published applications.

Prerequisites

To share folders and drives with a remote desktop or published application, a Horizon administrator must enable the client drive redirection feature. This task involves enabling the agent Client Drive Redirection option. It can also include setting policies to control the client drive redirection behavior. Support for UNC paths requires Horizon Agent 7.3 or later. For more information, see the Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7 document.

You can hide the client drive redirection feature in Horizon Client by enabling a group policy setting. For more information, see Disable sharing files and folders in General Settings for Client GPOs. With Horizon Agent 7.8 and later, you can configure drive letter behavior for drives that are redirected by the client drive redirection feature by configuring the Display redirected device with drive letter group policy setting. For more information, see the Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7 document.

With Horizon Agent 7.9 and later, you can include or exclude folders on devices that have specified vendor and product IDs from being redirected by using the Include Vid/Pid Device and Exclude Vid/Pid Device group policy settings. For more information, see the Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7 document.

With Horizon Agent 7.10 and later, you can configure how drive letters are mapped by using the Configure drive letter mapping mode and Define drive letter mapping table group policy settings. For more information, see the Configuring Remote Desktop Features in Horizon 7 document.

If the secure tunnel is enabled on the Connection Server instance, configuring the browser on the client system to use a proxy server can cause poor client drive redirection performance. For the best client drive redirection performance, configure the browser not to use a proxy server or detect LAN settings automatically.

Procedure

  1. Open the Settings dialog box and display the Sharing panel.
    Option Description
    From the desktop and application selector window

    Right-click a remote desktop or published application icon, select Settings, and select Sharing in the left panel of the window that appears.

    From the Sharing dialog box that appears when you connect to a remote desktop or published application Click the Settings > Sharing link in the dialog box.
    From within a remote desktop

    Select Options > Share Folders from the menu bar.

  2. Configure the client drive redirection settings.
    Option Action
    Share a specific folder or drive with remote desktops and published applications

    Click the Add button, browse to and select the folder or drive to share, and click OK.

    Note: If a USB device is already connected to a remote desktop or published application with the USB redirection feature, you cannot share a folder on the USB device.

    Also, do not turn on the USB redirection feature that connects USB devices automatically at startup or when the device is inserted. If you do so, the next time you start Horizon Client or plug in the USB device, the device connects with the USB redirection feature instead of with the client drive redirection feature.

    Stop sharing a specific folder or drive

    Select the folder or drive in the Folder list and click the Remove button.

    Give remote desktops and published applications access to files in your local user directory

    Select the Share your local files user-name check box.

    Share USB storage devices with remote desktops and published applications

    Select the Allow access to removable storage check box. The client drive redirection feature shares all USB storage devices inserted in your client system and all FireWire and Thunderbolt-connected external drives automatically. Selecting a specific device to share is not necessary.

    Note: USB storage devices already connected to a remote desktop or published application with the USB redirection feature are not shared.

    If this check box is deselected, you can use the USB redirection feature to connect USB storage devices to remote desktops and published applications.

    Turn on the ability to open a local file with a published application from the local file system

    Select the Open local files in hosted applications check box. With this option, you can right-click a file in your local file system and select to open the file in a published application.

    You can also change the properties of the file so that all files with that file extension are opened with the published application by default, such as when you double-click the file. For example, you can right-click a file, select Properties, and click Change to select the published application to open files of that type.

    A Horizon administrator can disable this feature.

    Do not show the Sharing dialog box when you connect to a remote desktop or published application Select the Do not show dialog when connecting to a desktop or application check box.

    If this check box is deselected, the Sharing dialog box appears the first time you connect to a remote desktop or published application. For example, if you log in to a server and connect to a remote desktop, you see the Sharing dialog box. If you then connect to another remote desktop or published application, you do not see the dialog box. To see the dialog box again, you must disconnect from the server and log in again.

What to do next

Verify that you can see the shared folders from within the remote desktop or published application.

  • In a Windows remote desktop, open File Explorer and look in the This PC folder, or open Windows Explorer and look in the Computer folder, depending on the Windows operating system version.
  • In a published application, select File > Open or File > Save As and navigate to the folder or drive.

The folders and drives that you selected for sharing might use one (or more) of the following naming conventions.

Naming Convention Example
folder-name on desktop-name jsmith on JSMITH-W03
folder-name (drive-number:) jsmith (Z:)
folder-name on desktoptop-name (drive-number:) jsmith on JSMITH-W03 (Z:)

For some Horizon Agent versions, a redirected folder can have two entrances, such as under Devices and drives and Network locations in Windows 10, and both entrances can appear at the same time. If all the volume labels (from A: through Z:) are already in use, the redirected folder has only one entrance.