How to stop “Desktop” from appearing under “This PC” in Navigation Pane in Windows 10

Solution 1:

The Desktop that appears as the root when Show all folders is selected is a virtual folder with namespace junctions to the file system locations.

If you open three File Explorer windows:

• Desktop ( namespace root )
• Computer\Desktop
• C:\Users<UserName>\Desktop

(my Desktop is pointed to a folder named DummyDesktop)

and then use PowerShell to examine the properties of the windows, you'll see that the Folder object for all three has the same value for path -- the associated file system folder:

PS C:\> @((New-Object -com shell.application).Windows()).Document.Folder.Self.Path
C:\Users\keith\DummyDesktop
C:\Users\keith\DummyDesktop
C:\Users\keith\DummyDesktop
PS C:\>

So it could very well be how the apps are coded. If they're using the path rather than a PIDL, they're quite likely unaware of the namespace distinction.