How To Make Custom Folder Icons Windows 11

[Janae Chebret]

Iam trying to make custom folder icons for my USB. I have changed the \desktop.ini to reflect where my icon is located. I have placed the icons in the corresponding folders within my USB and hid them. Here is what my desktop.ini looks like:

In case the desktop.ini and the *.ico files are located in the same folder, you could also just do:IconResource=yourFile.ico,0

As far I understand, the FileResource Tag is rather about using a dll or similar, which contains multiple icons. You should also be able to use:IconFile=yourFile.ico

Edit: If you would like to use a icon from a dll or exe it would be something along the lines of Icon=yourfile.exe,1 To represent the SECCOND icon (0 is the first) within the exe. Just replace "exe" with "dll" to use a dll file, taken from here

Windows looks for icons in the System 32 folder by default, but you can choose Browse to look elsewhere. See the directions at the bottom of this page for more on making and selecting custom folder icons.

You shouldn't have any problems editing the registry if you follow only the directions on this page. But, to be safe, consider backing up the registry. Then, should something unexpected happen, you can always restore the registry from that backup.

To add an Internet Explorer icon to the desktop in Windows 11, you can create a desktop shortcut. Go to Start, locate Internet Explorer, then select it and drag it onto the desktop. You can do this for other applications, as well.

We'll show you how to change icons on Windows 10, including program and folder icons. With a bit of work, you'll have an all-new interface with a unique look! While we focus on Windows 10 here, these tips largely work the same on Windows 11.

Flaticon is a great resource for all your Windows icon needs. The site contains millions of high-quality icons arranged in thousands of convenient packs. You can grab everything in a pack at once, or download single icons.

The site offers downloads in several formats. We recommend downloading them in PNG for easy conversion to the ICO format. Keep all the raw downloads in a folder called PNG Icons or similar.

ConvertICO offers an easy way to do this. You can upload up to 50 PNG images at once to convert them into the ICO format. If you prefer, you can also enter the URL of an image you want to convert, cutting out the middle step of downloading the PNG.

Windows 10 makes it easy to change the program icon for a shortcut, but not the main executable. Thus, you should make a desktop shortcut for the app icon you want to change, if you don't have one already.

To do this, search for an app in the Start menu, then right-click its name and choose Open file location. In the resulting folder, right-click the program name and choose Send to > Desktop (create shortcut).

Now you can modify the new shortcut on your desktop. Right-click it and choose Properties to open a new window. Here, switch to the Shortcut tab and click the Change Icon button at the bottom.

Want to customize the icons on your Taskbar too? The easiest way to do this is to follow the steps above to create custom desktop icons. After that, simply right-click a shortcut and choose Pin to Taskbar.

If you'd rather, you can customize an icon already pinned to your Taskbar. While holding Shift, right-click the app icon and choose Properties. From here, you can follow the same steps as above to set a new icon.

On the resulting window, switch to the Customize tab. Select the Change Icon button at the bottom to select a new icon from your computer. Windows includes many default icons for this, but most of them are old-school and ugly. Hit Browse to locate your custom icons instead.

Now, double-click the 3 string you just made. In the Value data field, enter the location of your folder icon in quotes. An easy way to do this is by holding Shift while right-clicking your ICO file, then selecting the Copy as path option. It should look something like this:

Using this, you can set up separate icons to distinguish file types, even if they open in the same program. You might want to make it easier to highlight JPG and PNG files at a glance, or spot old DOC Word files not using the newer DOCX format, for instance.

To start, create a new folder somewhere you can keep permanently. Name it Spaces or something similar. Inside this folder, right-click again and choose New > Text document. Double-click the file to open it.

Windows has blank icons built-in. But in our testing, these can appear as black squares on your Taskbar instead of transparent boxes, which is no good. This means you'll need to quickly make your own "blank" icon.

However, if you leave it like this, you'll run into the same black block problem. Thus, you need to take the Pencil tool, zoom in, and use it to draw a single pixel in a corner of the image. This will effectively be invisible when it sits on your Taskbar.

Once this is done, you'll need to add one more element in order to add these shortcuts to your Taskbar. In the Shortcut tab of each BAT file, enter explorer in front of everything in the Target box. Make sure there's a space before the opening quotes.

Now you can right-click all your Space files and choose Pin to taskbar. They'll appear as blank icons, allowing you to drag them wherever you like and group your other icons.

Just want to adjust the size of Windows 10 icons on your desktop? That's an easy fix. On the desktop, you can right-click any empty space and choose View to select Small icons, Medium icons, or Large icons.

If you don't see any icons on your desktop, chances are that you've hidden them all. Getting them back takes just a few clicks. Right-click anywhere on your desktop, then select View > Show desktop icons if it's not already checked. With this enabled, you should see your desktop icons with no problem.

Finally, if you're missing the default Windows 10 system icons, you'll need to restore them in another menu. Go to Settings > Personalization > Themes and on the right side of the window, select Desktop icon settings.

Now you know how to change nearly every icon on your Windows system. Whether you want to completely overhaul everything or just want to change a few shortcut icons, you have the tools to personalize your computer in a fun way.

After reading a lot and trying for 2 days in a row, I managed to make something work by following this Microsoft tutorial on folder icons, but it's not perfect - changes don't take place immediately. I need to restart explorer / reboot my computer or wait a couple of minutes (randomly) until I see the old icon change to the new icon.

Problem: After chaining my .ico file, I expect to see the result immideiately, but I only see it after 30 seconds to 4 minutes or so. It changes instantly as well sometimes, but very rarely, and I want it to work 100% of the time.

I found a way to see the icon change immediately, but it worked only when manually renaming desktop.ini through the explorer itself. (changing desktop.ini to uppercase/lowercase or to desktop-temp.ini and then back to desktop.ini) When doing so, I see the folder icon change immediately.

That led me to a hope that I can do the same programmatically, so I tried this C++ code, that changes desktop.ini to desktop-temp.ini and back to desktop.ini, also with notifying windows that a change has occurred, but it did not work unfortunately.

How can I change my Dropbox folder icons and use my own icons? Until recently, I could change icons to my own icon picture, which made working quicker. I use Mac OS Mojave on a MacBook Pro, and use Dropbox from my Mac OS desktop finder window. As of the second week of October, all my icons reverted to generic folder icons and I am not able to change them. Is there a new method, or is there a new Dropbox download that I need? How can I again change my folder icons? (10/24/19)

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Hi,@TedC I'm having the same problem, so I tried your suggestion and installed the software update/ beta version. All my custom icons are still missing... which is a pretty huge pain in the butt because we're talking about hundreds of files that I spent a lot of time organizing with custom icons. Any other ideas of something I could try? Also, suddenly this dialogue box has come up on my last couple of re-starts: Dropbox needs to change permissions for the FolderL/Users/[myname]/Dropbox??? I enter the password as prompted, but just not sure why it's suddenly happening and if it has anything to do with my icon issue.

Hey @TedC I'm having a similar issue with my business dropbox account regarding being able to change the folder icons. I can change them on my personal account. I'm the Admin of my business account so I'm not sure why I can't. Can you please help? Thank you!

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