What's the difference between SpecialFolder.Desktop and SpecialFolder.DesktopDirectory?

Question

I\'m confused about the differences between these two special folders.

Here\'s a code snippet that writes the output of each, but they output the same thing.

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Answer 1

The true answer is that those can be different especially width profiles on servers. The user might be running a desktop as from a fileshare, or have it on a local system... If redirected the OS normally doesnt inform other software that it has done that. But if you realy want to get there...

Answer 2

A directory is a location in the file system. A folder is a location in the shell namespace. A directory is a kind of folder. A virtual folder is not necessarily backed by a directory. For example consider libraries or search folders.

The user's desktop directory is a location in the file system. The desktop folder merges that with virtual items like all users items, recycle bin, shortcut to documents folder etc.