How To Resize Desktop Icon In Windows 7 or Vista

By Asad on Sep 23 2008 223 Comments

Do you find the icon size on Vista desktop too big or too small? The effect of visual appearance on shortcuts and programs icons is more stark when users adjust and change the monitor screen resolution or font size in DPI scaling, where the icons size becomes bigger and smaller to an uncomfortable level. Users can easily resize Vista desktop icons or change the size of icons on Vista desktop. There are four methods to resize the desktop icons, depending on your preference and also the ’size’ that you want to change the icons to.

ALZipVistaDesktopIcon

Mouse Wheel Method

The option to select from only three available sizes wasn’t satisfying enough, so I found another method. Make sure the desktop has the focus, just click anywhere on the desktop before starting this process. Press & hold Ctrl on the keyboard, Scroll with the mouse wheel up or down to get the desired size.

image_thumb_3

Using ‘Color And Appearance’ Method

The above method was actually much better. You can have variety of sizes and one for sure will suit you. But what if you don’t have a mouse wheel?, the closest I could find is to do this: Right click on an empty spot on your desktop and choose Personalize, now choose the first item on the list Windows Color and Appearance,  and then click the last link Open classic appearance properties for more color options.

window-color-and-appearance

You will get the Windows XP type dialog. Click on Advanced, Under Item choose Icon, Set the size to your liking. Range from 16-72, hit OK and again hit OK on the second dialog.

011308-2030-windowsmail2

Registry Tweak Method

If you like to tweak around the registry (like I do), then that can be set under that key,

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Using the first method it will instantly update the icon size on your desktop and you will see the changes, while working through the registry I couldn’t get it to refresh without logging off first. I tried F5 on the desktop and choosing Refresh from the shortcut menu on the desktop, but it had no effect. Note that changing the icons with the registry key manually will also reflect on the Windows Vista dialog and vice-versa.

I am sure I haven’t missed any method to resize the icons, but if I have, do let me know about it.

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  • PatCumbria

    What a useful tip – and so easy. Makes me wonder what other gems I am missing! Thanks.

  • prit

    thx men u rock….

  • fulla

    thenks alot .. it was areal problem for me

  • PRITESH KUMAR

    THANX MAN!

  • Sniper

    THX man. You are my hereo!

  • asmdar

    THX a lot!!!

  • savad

    i was searching, thanx alot !!!!!

  • Scott

    None of these choices works AT ALL with my Gateway (piece of garbage) laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium O/S

  • Nancy

    Grateful for this post. I’ve had my Win 7 laptop for 8 months, and the smallest size of desktop icons was way too large for me, but I just thought I had to live with it. Today I have my old laptop open (w/much smaller icons on it), and decided to search on making icons smaller in Win 7… I had no idea it was so easy to change!! I’ve bookmarked your site. Thanks for this piece of simple brilliance!!!

  • Karl Marx

    Thanks, this was helpful.

  • barakuda

    Thanks. Awesome tip!

  • Chey

    Awesome tip, struggled for a bit initially and got used to it. Feels so good to be able to dump all on one view! Kudos!

  • vazim

    now i know why the icons got larger accidently :) . Thanks a ton.

  • zhosi

    Unbelievable it was so easy thank you man.

  • rahul

    thanx for this educational post.

  • John

    This is awesome! Thank you!!!!

  • max

    thanks !!

  • MICHAEL FLITTERMAN

    Tried the beta of Chrome – DON’T DO IT. On my Win 7 the results were disastrous. Stopped Outlook from opening a Firefox site (no work-around), caused IE8 to disallow updates, required re-boot close all start-ups and only open IE before updates were available.
    Used Control Panel to remove Chrome and clean the other directories and things came back to normal.

    WOW what a terrible experience..

  • benstar7283

    thanks for hellping me

  • Matt

    Thanks for this post! One of my kids accidentally made my icons huge and I could not figure out how to get them back. It was driving me nuts :)

  • Craig

    Thanks for this post!!!

  • Byron H.

    Hi.
    You forgot right click on desktop -> view -> Large icons (or another).
    :)
    Bh.

    • peppi or kokki

      Hi Byron, that was it!!! All the other options didn’t work for me.
      Thanks a ton!

  • asdf

    thanks dude!!!

  • Vincent

    Awesome, it works good!! thanks a bunch!!

  • Biebbberr ;

    THANKS ALOT ! THAT HELPED A BUNCH !(:<3 !

  • memica

    thank you!

  • Doug

    Thanks!

  • -

    “having no text at all on my icons”
    Search for info on text color. iirc, when bgrd color reaches a middle level of light/dark, text color switches.
    However, you might be able to tile a 1pixel image as ‘wallpaper’. Use a color dropper to sample the text color (or just assume dark text is black and light text is white!), and create the 1pixel image in that color.
    The text will be there, but you won’t see it.

  • -

    XP
    Only experimenting, the scroll method doesn’t work on XP Pro. I even tried pressing holding scroll ‘button’ while scrolling it. No effect.
    Vista Home
    Vista icons at the lowest “16″ are annoyingly oversize on 17″ display. In the past, I’d had the icons smaller, using a forgotten messy sequence of settings. But that wasn’t working in recent tries.
    This Ctrl+Scroll method worked. ‘wooooooOO’

    In both Vista and XP, Desksave backs up icon locations. I disable the automatic stuff in options.

  • RichC

    Cool, thanks

  • Paul

    Simple:
    Right click on the desktop and select “View” then choose from Small, Medium or Large.

    No fuss

  • Srinivas

    The mouse method is awesome. Thanks a lot!

  • Bhuvaneswari

    Really the mouse method showed me how to do it. thank you very much

  • jennifer

    Thanks

  • pb_013

    Thanks very much !!!

  • AMR

    that was awesome….

  • Susan

    THANKS A MILLION for saving my sanity. I have just got a new Sony Vaio touchscreen and wanted the desktop icons made smaller. Having looked almost everywhere for help you were my last resort ( should have been my first ). Silly me.

  • mY

    wow thanks a lot

  • Guilherme

    Wow! I was wondering how to do that!
    Thanks alot!

  • Preetron

    Is this windows 7?????????

  • Preetron

    if it’s not, then how did you get that boxes around the desktop icons in the first image when you take the mouse pointer over them?????????????
    pls replyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Big Woo

    The control/ scroll advice was very helpful. Thanks

  • boo

    cheers mate…great tip!

  • salim

    thanks alot, it really helped ! i’ve got windows 7 and the icons were just growing bigger and bigger every time i shut down my laptop, anyhow, thanx !!!!!

  • Rocky Tan

    Mouse Wheel Methos is the most good method i ever learn here.
    it was awesome!

  • kurdo

    thanks .it really help me

  • Kristina

    Thanks this was very helpful. :D

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  • Fattie

    It was helped! Thank you!

  • aadhavan

    thx man its awesome helped me a lotzzzzzzzzz

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