I wrote previously, where I found that the Group Policy added to the insider build of Windows 10 did not have any observable effect.

This is merely a quick note as I re-tested on the recently released Anniversary Update, and with the group policy set in addition to the new “longPathAware” manifest setting, Functions like CreateDirectoryW do in fact allow access to long path names beyond MAX_PATH without the special prefix. Basically, the group policy is now active.

Of course, with the standard .NET File API, This has no effect, as the .NET File API does it’s own checks that restrict the path length.