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How to Customize Icons in Windows 7 the Easy Way

Melanie Gross — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 07:18:38 +0000

The same old icons can be a little boring after awhile. Users who spend a great deal of time with their PCs often get the urge to tweak their desktop and make it as unique as possible. This is not something that has to be done; it is simply something one gets the urge to do. You can change desktop backgrounds to virtually any image, add gadgets and change themes. What about the icons? Windows 7 has built-in features for changing icons and there are even third party applications that you can use to customize icons. This article will detail the basics of customizing icons in Windows 7.

To start, we will change the Recycle Bin, Computer and Network icons. This is so simple that you may find yourself doing it often just to keep things looking fresh.

Right-click anywhere on the desktop (except on an icon) and select Personalize

You can also access this window from the Control Panel and click Appearance and Personalization. Click the “Change desktop icons” link in the left sidebar of the window.

For Vista, the process is actually the same but the window will look different. Choose the icon that you wish to change and click on it once then click the “Change Icon” button. You can check the box next to “Allow themes to change desktop icons” to make this a little more interesting.

Now you may either select one of the included icons or click Browse and find the icon you wish to use. Click OK when you have selected the desired icon.

Changing Folder Icons

It also takes just a few steps to change the icons for most folders in Windows 7 as well as Vista. Simply right-click on the folder and then click Properties. Click the Customize tab.

Follow the same steps as you did previously to change the basic desktop icons. Choose an icon from the listing or browse for a specific icon image such as a PNG or JPEG image. You can even go to the Pictures folder and choose a picture and use that as the icon. To keep it simple for this demonstration, a preset icon will be selected.

Once the new icon is selected, click Apply and the icon will be set.

In Windows 7, you cannot change the icon for a library folder. If you are browsing the Documents library and you do want to change the icon for a particular folder, right-click the folder and open the folder location. Now you will be able to change the icon using the same steps as above. There are other techniques for changing icons in Windows 7. This is just intended as a simple overview of the method.

Use Related Icons for any Folder Icon

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:24:38 +0000

Icon Any Folder is another great application that I discovered at Donation Coder which is small, lightweight but oh so useful. There are numerous applications out there that let you pick a new icon for a folder that you specify. Most of the time though those icons are not really related and none of these tools offers a way to automatically add related folder icons to your folders.

This program does. The idea is to search for icons inside the folder and use one of those as the folder icon from now on. The application scans the files inside each folder for possible icons and picks the first icon it finds in an executable file. The user only has to select a directory that he wants processed, everything else is done by the tool.

Changes can be reverted as well by simply changing the option to Undo Icons instead of Finding Icons. I tested Icon Any Folder on my test folder that contains about one hundred applications and it tool only a few seconds to process all folders within and change the icons.

Before Screenshot:

After Screenshot:

Using Icon Any Folder could not be much easier. Just select a folder that you want to process and click on Start. Wait a few seconds until the folder is processed. To go back to the old folder icon structure select Undo Icons from the Mode menu, pick the same folder again and click on Start.

Change Folder Icons with ease

Martin Brinkmann — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:18:46 +0000

Folders in Windows look all the same which serves the purpose of being able to recognize them immediately. While this might be nice for novice computer users advanced users might want to change the appearance of some of the folders to make them stick out from the rest.

It would be for instance possible to give all folders containing media files a distinctive icon, all work folders another one and all software folders a third. The software Folderico can change the folder icon of any folder in Windows XP and Windows 2000. This can be done by right-clicking a folder and selecting Folderico from the menu.

A set if icon suggestions will be shown and the icon the user chooses will be assigned immediately. The user has the choice to change the folder icons that are displayed when right-clicking a file in the options. Five icon sets are preinstalled including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Crystal Clear icons.

Folderico has an option to import icon libraries in icl format to add even more folder icons to the software. One great feature of Folderico is the permanency of the change. Even if you change a folder on an USB drive or network drive and disconnect that drive the changed folder icon will still be visible because of the way the icons are saved.

If you would connect the USB device to a friends computer it would still show the changed folders. If you are unhappy with the icon of a folder that you have selected for it you can simply swap it to another one or reset it which would change it to the default icon of Windows again.

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