Did you ever experience a problem where your computer was not able to copy data since the path was too long?

Windows only allowed file names that were eight characters long, with a three-character file extension until Windows 95 which is known as an 8.3 filename. With Windows 95 long file names were introduced but still limited the maximum path length (which includes the full folder path and the file name) to 260 characters.

macOS instead has a filename length of 255 UTF-8 characters limited. The maximum path can support up to 1024 characters.

This problem mostly appears while trying to copy data from a MAC to a Windows formatted Harddisk or USB Stick. Let us have a look at the difference between Windows OS and macOS.

Fixing this problem is possible through a registry hack. Since editing the registry can damage your Windows setup we made two small Registry files which remove or restore the Windows path limit.

Download the compressed file here.

Unzip the Files and run path length limit remove.reg to remove the path limit or path length limit restore.reg to restore the default limit of 260 characters.