How to Customize Your Icons in Windows. Personalizing your icons is a great way to make a PC uniquely yours. Let’s take a look at the different ways Windows lets you customize your icons. Windows has a number of built in icons you can choose from, but there is also an untold number of icons you can download from sites like Icon. Archive, Deviant. Art, and Iconfinder—all of which have loads of free icons. And if you can’t find something you like, you can even make your own high resolution icons out of any image. Once you have the icons of your dreams, save them in a safe place—some of these processes will require they stay in on your PC. In other cases, you’ll probably want them there just in case something goes wrong and you have to re- apply them. Change Your Desktop Icons (Computer, Recycle Bin, Network, and So On)Icons like This PC, Network, Recycle Bin, and your User folder are all considered “desktop icons,” even though modern versions of Windows don’t show them all on the desktop. Windows 8 and 1. 0 don’t show any of the desktop icons except for Recycle Bin, and even Windows 7 doesn’t show them all.
For a complete rundown, check out our guide to restoring missing desktop icons in Windows 7, 8, or 1. But you can still change how these icons appear elsewhere on your system. ![]() To do so, you’ll need to access the “Desktop Icon Settings” window to turn these icons on and off or to change the associated icons. In Windows 8 and 1. Control Panel > Personalize > Change Desktop Icons. Use the check boxes in the “Desktop icons” section to select which icons you want on your desktop. To change an icon, select the icon you want to change and then click the “Change Icon” button. In the “Change Icon” window, you can select any icon you want from the built in Windows icons or you can Click “Browse” to locate your own icons. If you browse for your own icon file, you can select any EXE, DLL, or ICO file. After selecting the file, the “Change Icon” window will show the icons contained in the file you selected. Click the one you want and then click “OK.” Here, we’re changing the “This PC” icon to use one that looks more like a laptop than a desktop. After changing your icon, you should see the new icon used in File Explorer, on the Desktop, and in the taskbar when the folder is open. And if you want to reverse the change, you can always go back to the “Desktop Icon Settings” window, select the icon you want to change back, and click “Restore Default.”Change Folder Icons. Changing the icon for a folder is not only a good way to pretty things up, but also to call attention to important items. To change a folder icon, right- click the folder you want to change and choose “Properties.”In the folder’s properties window, switch to the “Customize” tab and then click the “Change Icon” button. In the “Change Icon” window, you can select any icon you want from the built in Windows icons or you can Click “Browse” to locate your own icons. If you browse for your own icon file, you can select any EXE, DLL, or ICO file. After selecting the file, the “Change Icon” window will show the icons contained in the file you selected. Click the one you want and then click “OK.” Here, we’re changing the icon for this folder to a red one to make it stand out more. ![]() ![]() Download Icon Creator Icon Craft is a powerful and easy-to-use icon creator to edit icons, find, extract, create icon and cursor images, and manage icon libraries and. And back in the properties window, click “OK.”The folder should now show up in File Explorer (or on the desktop) with the new icon. This feature works by creating a hidden Desktop. Put it somewhere you know you won’t delete it first, or make the ICO file hidden. And if you really want to fine tune how folders look and operate on your PC, you should also explore how to customize folder views with Windows’ five templates and how to customize folder view settings in Windows. It’s taken you by surprise. All the desktop icons, links and files have disappeared! Have they been deleted? Are they lost? I understand the immensity of the.Change the Icon for a Type of File. You can also change the icon for specific file types (those that end in certain extensions) so that all files of that type use the new icon. Why bother to do this? Suppose, for example, you used an image editing program that used essentially the same icon for all the different types of image files it supported—PNG, JPG, GIF, and so on. You might find it more convenient if each of those file types used a different icon so they were easier to distinguish—especially if you keep multiple file types in the same folder. Unfortunately, there’s no built in way to do this in Windows. Instead, you’ll need to download a free tool to do the job: File Types Manager by Nirsoft. We’ve got a complete guide to using File Types Manager to change the icon for a certain file type, so if you think this would be useful for you, give it a read! The one type of file that File Types Manager is not good at handling, though, is executable (EXE) files. For that, we’ve got another free tool recommendation—Resource Hacker. And of course, we also have a guide to using it to modify the icon for an EXE file. Change the Icon of Any Shortcut. Change the icon for a shortcut in Windows is also pretty simple and works the same whether it’s a shortcut to an app, folder, or even Command Prompt command. Right- click the shortcut and choose “Properties.”On the “Shortcut” tab, click the “Change Icon” button. This opens the standard “Change Icon” window we’ve looked at a couple of times already. Choose one of the default icons or browse to any EXE, DLL, or ICO file that contains icons. After making and applying your selection, you’ll see the new icon in File Explorer, on the Desktop, or on the taskbar if you have your Shortcut pinned there. If you want, you can even customize those shortcut icons further by removing (or changing) the arrow overlays or preventing Windows from adding the “- Shortcut” text. Change the Icon of Apps that Are Pinned to the Taskbar. Icons that are pinned to your taskbar are really shortcuts—they just don’t have the arrow overlay and “- Shortcut” text you normally associated with shortcuts. As such, you can customize their icons in nearly the same way that you customize any shortcut icon. You just need to keep a few things in mind: You can only customize the icons of apps that are actually pinned to the taskbar. If the icon is only on the taskbar because the app is currently running and it isn’t actually pinned there, you can customize it. So, pin it first. If an app is pinned, but is currently running, you’ll need to close the app before you can change the shortcut icon. Just right- clicking a pinned app shows you the app’s jumplist. To access the regular context menu instead, hold the Shift key down while right- clicking the icon. Choose “Properties” from that menu and then the rest of the process will be familiar to you from the previous section. Once you do so, you can head to Properties and change the icon as normal. Change the Icon of any Drive in File Explorer. Unfortunately, there’s no simple built- in way to change the icons for drives in Windows. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it though. The easy way is to use a free app named Drive Icon Changer. There’s also a way that works a bit differently and involves a little Registry editing. You can read all about how to both in our guide to changing drive icons in Windows. Drive Icon Changer is definitely the easiest way, though you can do it from the registry if you’d really prefer not to use extra software. Hopefully, this gives you enough information about changing icons that you can make things look just the way you want them. If you have more advice, be sure to let us know in the comments! Desktop icons deleted? Or have they simply disappeared? Get back those lost icons. It’s taken you by surprise. All the desktop icons, links and files have disappeared! Have they been deleted? Are they lost? I understand the immensity of the problem and your anguish. But, relax; most probably you can get all the icons back so take a deep breath and read on. If all the icons have disappeared or are lost, most likely you or someone else, have accidentally hidden them. Windows Vista gives you the option of showing or hiding all desktop icons in a couple of mouse clicks. This feature can be found under the view menu. Sponsored Links. Get back the lost desktop icons. Go to your (now) blank desktop, right- click (click the right- button on your mouse) and select Show Desktop Icons option from the “View” menu. That’s it – all icons, links, shortcuts will be back on the desktop. So you see, the icons had just disappeared! Now that you know of this cool feature, use it well. On a similar note, you can change the size of the desktop icons through the “View” menu by selecting one of the presets – Large Icons, Medium Icons or Classic Icons – or using the Control key and mouse scroll wheel for custom sizes. Desktop icons deleted. This is a different ball game altogether. If the desktop icons have been accidentally (or intentionally) deleted, you can go to the Recycle Bin and restore the files and shortcuts back to the desktop. Open the Recycle Bin by double clicking on it, select the files that were present on the desktop and then right- click and choose “Restore“. The files, shortcuts and icons will be back where they belong. Is the Recycle Bin empty? Now the only way to get the links and shortcuts back is to create them once again – please refer the tip on creating shortcut icons for desktop. Unfortunately, if you had stored files on the desktop and these were deleted, there is no straightforward way to get them back once the Recycle bin has been emptied. You can try using some free and commercial “undelete” programs but their success in restoring deleted / lost files depends whether the space used by the deleted file has been overwritten by a new one.
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November 2017
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