The Xbox app uses a .GamingRoot file to identify drives it can install games on.
You may have one or more .GamingRoot files if you use Xbox Game Pass.
The .GamingRoot file is created by Microsoft’s Xbox app on Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
This is a real file—not a virus—and you shouldn’t delete it.
The Xbox app uses this file to identify drives it can install games on.
What Is the .GamingRoot File?
The Xbox app uses the .GamingRoot file to identify drives you’re free to install games on.
The .GamingRoot file is normally hidden.
You won’t see it unless you’ve chosen toshow hidden files in File Explorer.
This may be a secondary internal drive or an external drive.
The file is located in the “root” of your drive.
Under “Game Install Options,” you’ll see a dropdown menu with a list of drives.
All the drives in this list will have a GamingRoot file created on them by the Xbox app.
Can You Delete the .GamingRoot File?
We recommend against deleting this file.
The .GamingRoot file is very small and barely takes up any space.
Windows reports it takes up 28 bytes of space on our system—it’s almost an empty file.
You won’t free up any usable disk space by deleting it.
Since file doesn’t take up much space, so we recommend ignoring it.
