Where Windows 10 Standard Icons Are Stored

By releasing the new Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft gave it many new features and significantly redesigned the system design. The desktop icons have also undergone changes. Many users are accustomed to the old icons that were present on Windows 7. Therefore, non-standard icons after switching to the new Windows 10 did not appeal to many PC users. In the new Windows 10, they can be easily changed for any shortcut on the desktop. In this article, we will describe all the ways to change the icons in Windows 10. In addition, we will describe the process of creating new icons.

Change the icons of the main desktop shortcuts

Key desktop shortcuts include links such as “This computer“,”Control Panel“,”Basket“. To change these icons, go to the “Parameters“To links”CUSTOMIZATION / Themes“.

In the window that opens, you must open the link “Desktop Icon Options“. This link will open an additional window where you can make changes.

Now let’s try changing the label “Basket“. To do this, select the basket and click on the Change icon button.

What shortcuts on the Windows 10 desktop can I change

The main desktop elements for which you can change the icons are shortcuts (links to programs, files and folders) and folders. We’ll describe an example of changing the icon in Google Chrome. To do this, go to the properties of the browser shortcut.

Now, if we click on the Change icon button, we will have four options for choosing the icon.

It can be seen from the example that when we get to the window of the icon selection list, the same window appears in front of us as in the first example. The only difference is that all the icons are taken not from the system library, but from the chrome.exe executable file. In this window, as in the first example, you can select an icon from “Open icon library“Or any other.

Now consider changing the icon for folders on the desktop. For example, we will create a folder with the name “Icon” on the desktop. After creating it, we will go to its properties on the tab “Customization“.

On this tab, we click on the already familiar Change icon button. After this action, we will see the same window as in the previous examples.

The principle of replacing the folder icon with a third-party one, and not from the “shell32.dll” library, is the same as in the previous examples.

Create your own badges

For this example, we will use the program Icofx. This program may easily create various icons from bitmaps. For this example, we will take a free photo from the site https://pixabay.com. On this site you can find thousands of free images.

We will also download and install the program. Icofx. After that, open the IcoFX program, and also open our image in it.

When you open the image, the utility offers you to make a choice. We will focus on the option “Create an icon from the image“. This option will open our image in a reduced resolution, which can be saved for use as an icon.

Once you select the appropriate icon size, you can save it. In our case, the size is 256 × 256. It is saved in the ico file format. Below is an example of a Shortcut user label with our icon.

Customize label sizes

Resizing desktop shortcuts is easy enough. To do this, go to the active desktop and right-click on it. After this action, a context menu will open in which you need to go to the line “View“.

The image above shows that you can make the size large, regular, and small. This setting allows you to adjust the size for monitors with different resolutions and diagonals. For example, for large monitors, you can reduce the size of shortcuts, and for small diagonals, make them large. It is also worth noting that in the “View” item you can pin shortcuts to the grid and pin them automatically to the desktop.

Finally

After reading this article, you will learn how to easily change icons in Windows 10. In addition, the article shows how you can create icons from bitmap images yourself. We hope this material helps our readers change icons in Windows 10, as well as create new ones.