How to Customize Any Folder or App Icon in Windows

Custom icons aren’t just for fun; they can also help you better identify oft-used folders and apps to save you time searching. Changing an app or folder’s icon is very easy in Windows. Here’s how to do it.

We’ve shown you how to do this on a Mac , and while there are a few more caveats to doing it on Windows, it’s still pretty simple. All you need is a .ico file for your icon, which you can get at sites like Iconspedia or Icon Archive . Alternatively, you can turn a .png file into a .ico with an online converter like this one . Once you have it, save it in a safe place (since you can’t delete it later on, or else your custom icon will disappear), then just follow these steps:

How to Customize Any Folder or App Icon Using Any Image in OS X

Customizing your desktop icons isn’t strictly a time waster. Take, for example, your most-used…

1. Right-click on the folder or shortcut that you want to customize and choose Properties. If you’re trying to customize something on the taskbar, right-click on it, then right-click on its name in the jumplist and choose Properties.

Go to the Customize tab if you’re changing the icon of a folder, or the Shortcut tab if you’re changing the icon of a shortcut. Click the Change Icon button.

Browse to the .ico file you want to use and click OK. Depending on what you’re changing, you may need to log out and back in for the icon to show up. If it’s an icon in the taskbar, you may even need to rebuild the icon cache and restart by opening a command prompt and running the following four commands:

This will restart your computer, so save any work you have before running these commands

Okay, it isn’t the most seamless process, but it still isn’t too bad. If you want to customize more than just a few icons, though, you’ll need to buy a program like the $10 IconPackager from Stardock. It costs money, but it’s well worth it if you’re a heavy customizer.

How to Change Icons of Folders in This PC in Windows 10

With Windows 8.1, Microsoft introduced a set of folders inside the This PC folder. These folders include Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Videos. Windows 10 initially came with the same set of folders in This PC. Starting with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, a new folder has been added to that set, named 3D Objects. Today, we will see how to customize icons for these folders.

Tip: You can quickly remove unwanted folders as described here:

Each folder has a unique icon. The ability to customize the icons is missing in the GUI, so at first glance, changing the icons seems impossible. However, it is not a big problem. The icons are specified in the Registry, so by editing the required values, you can change the icons of folders in This PC to what you want.

You must be signed in with an administrative account to continue.

To change icons of folders in This PC in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Download the ExecTI freeware and start regedit.exe using it. This will open the Registry Editor app with the highest privilege level.
2. Go to the following Registry key.

See how to go to a Registry key with one click.

On the right, change the default (unnamed) parameter to the full path to your new icon.

To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account. Alternatively, you can restart the Explorer shell.

The sequence above will change the icon of the Desktop folder in This PC.

To change other icons, repeat the steps under the following Registry keys:

Tip: If the new icon that you set doesn’t appear in File Explorer, you need to reset the icon cache.

For reference, here are the default icon paths for all folders:

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About Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

4 thoughts on “ How to Change Icons of Folders in This PC in Windows 10 ”

Эхх. Жаль, что прочёл только сейчас, а не пару дней назад.
Пришлось использовать RegOwnershipEx для замены иконок панели управления.
Остальные иконки в пуске отображались выбранные мной, а панель управления выбивалась из общего стиля.

З.Ы, Програмка эта была у меня, только подзабыл про неё.

Жаль, что ExecTI показывает только последнюю программу. Удобно было бы иметь историю 10-ти файлов (можно реализовать настройку через ini -> value=XX).