I was playing the solitaire they added back in Windows 10 and when I closed it I noticed there were these green checkmarks on my Desktop icons:

What are these green checkmarks on my desktop? How do I get rid of them?

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3 Answers

Apparently the checkmarks may have been added by Microsoft OneDrive. (Source)

Another cause can be Norton backup flagging the files as backed up.

Pressing F5 or right clicking the desktop and choosing 'Refresh' should get rid of the checkmarks. (Source)

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I have found a different solution for this problem.

I had this problem too, but I don't have Norton nor One Drive. So i looked further. On the Microsoft forum I found a simple trick that worked for me.

If you right click on an empty space on the desktop and then 'refresh' the green check marks will disappear

It only seemed to affect the desktop shortcuts, nothing else. For more details you can read the article on the microsoft forum what is include in this post.

Link to Microsoft forum

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Rebuilding the icon cache solved the problem permanently for me.

Rebuild Icon Cache in Windows 10 | Tutorials

Option 2: To Rebuild the Icon Cache in the Command Prompt

1. Close and save anything that you are working on before proceeding. The next steps will involve killing explorer and restarting the PC.

2. Open a command prompt.

3. Copy and paste each command below one at a time into the command prompt, and press Enter after each command.

Warning

The last command will instantly restart the PC.

 ie4uinit.exe -show taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F DEL /A /Q "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" DEL /A /F /Q "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache*" shutdown /r /f /t 00