windows quick access rename

the go back button

hi did you manage to find my webbed site while also wanting to rename windows quick access things without renaming the folder?
but then you realize that your target folder "isn't on your computer" so windows doesn't want you to junction it together?
and symlinks show the source folder name always in a super annoying way?

well. i had that problem !
so im typing it in a technically-accessible way so that i dont forget it exists entirely

if you've looked up this problem you'll probably have found the solution that works for locally-accessible files, which is as follows:

mklink /J link-name C:\source-folder
this uh. only works in cmd because powershell wants you to use its own method and couldnt be bothered to alias it
this works because a junction is enough of a "real folder" that quick access pulls its name instead of the real-real folder we don't want it to pull from while still directing to, neat !!

unfortunately, if you're trying to point at a network-attached storage of any kind, or a "network attached storage" that's actually local-but-sorta-separate-from-windows like WSL is, you'll get an annoying error saying how it's not local enough!!
this is. frustrating ! symlinks can point to network drives but their names don't get pulled, junctions get their names pulled but don't point to network drives !
so as i was being frustrated about the fact that i couldn't have both i wondered if it was possible to just. junction a symlink? surely something that stupid couldn't be possible

And Yet, Possible It Is

that's right !!! all you need to do is junction a symlink and everything works perfectly at the expense of having two fake folders instead of just one
i just stuffed em all into Documents\symlinks and called it a day

so!! to recap, this is how you do the thing

mklink /D symlink-name \\wsl.localhost\source-folder
mklink /J junction-name symlink-name

if you move the symlink it wont work so make sure it's placed nice and good

in my case it'd be

mklink /D C:\Users\username\Documents\symlinks\symlink-name \\wsl.localhost\source-folder
mklink /J C:\Users\username\junction-name C:\Users\username\Documents\symlinks\symlink-name

and then after all that garbage you end up with a folder at C:\Users\username called junction-name that sneakily points all the way to \\wsl.localhost\source-folder EVEN IF it's inside wsl while also showing up as junction-name in quick access <3