You can't just add new entries to the directory tree on the root level. Unfortunately QDirModel doesn't show Desktop and My Documents entry and there is no easy way to make it work. You have to subclass the model and handle those entries in the subclass or implement a proxy model that would map proper indexes. It's not a 10 minute task, though. If you decide to do it, I'd go for the proxy approach. Also search the forum, there was a thread describing a similar problem about 2 months ago.