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> Windows lifted that limit a few years ago

IIRC, its a mess because it was lifted inconsistently for different access methods (APIs, and as a consequence UI/CLI methods that depend on them), and at least for some in ways which also are or were dependent on how paths are expressed.

So it is, or at least has historically been after it was first “lifted”, a minefield of inconsistent, surprising behaviors with plenty of gotchas if you didn’t treat it as if it were still a limit.

AFAIK the limit has been lifted since Windows NT (so since the 90s), but only if you use the obscure NT path prefix (\\?\).

Not that obscure, it's been mentioned on MSDN for every relevant operation since before 2000.

IIRC you still need to use a special flag to enable it, right?

There are two things necessary for an application to use long paths:

* the system must have LongPathsEnabled set (though it might be the default nowadays, not sure)

* the application itself must have `{http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2016/WindowsSettings}longPa...` set in its manifest