Tortoise SVN Icon Bug

The Tortoise SVN client is implemented as a shell extension, meaning that it can add awesome little icon overlays for all your files currently under version control. Which is great, it really helps to see at a glance what the current state of your project is. Or even help you find that one file you think you edited two weeks ago.

Sometimes this icon overlay messes up, I’m not sure why. Often the icons get stuck in the wrong state or even display completely different icon sets altogether.

Firstly, wait for 10 seconds after any SVN operation, then hit F5 in Windows Explorer. This should be enough time for the folder’s .svn database to update and rebuild all of the icons.

The Tweak UI application which comes as part of the Windows Power Pack has many repair functions. One includes a ‘rebuild icon’ option.

This should fix your problems pretty much instantly.