How to Change Desktop Icon Size in Windows

If you don’t like the current size of your desktop icons, don’t dwell on them. There are ways to resize the desktop icons in Windows and make them fit the screen however you want.

If you don’t like the new size icons on the desktop, you can always revert to the old settings and return the default size for the desktop icons.

Why is the desktop icon resized?

There are many reasons why you might want to resize your desktop icons.

If your current icons are too small, you may have difficulty identifying them. Increasing the size of the icons will make them more readable. The downside to this is that you will be able to fit fewer icons on the desktop.

If your current icons are too large, you can reduce their size and make them smaller This allows you to place more icons than what you currently have on your desktop. This should work if you don’t have vision problems.

Resize the desktop icon with the mouse

One of the easy ways to resize the desktop icon on a Windows PC is to use a mouse. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can scroll up or down to increase or decrease the size of the icons.

Go to your desktop on your PC.
Press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard.

Roll the mouse wheel up to increase the size of the desktop icons. You will see your icons zoom in real time on the screen.
Scroll the mouse wheel down to reduce the size of the desktop icons.

Use the context menu to resize the desktop icon

Windows provides you with the option to resize desktop icons from the context menu. This menu has several predefined icon sizes that you can choose and apply to icons on your desktop.

Right-click anywhere on an empty spot on your desktop.
Click the option that says View and you have three icon sizes to choose from: large, medium and small.

Clicking any of these options increases or decreases the size of the desktop icons. Most users prefer the medium icons option.

Edit option in settings to resize desktop icon

Windows 10 has a scaling and layout option that lets you scale various elements, including text, apps, and icons on your computer. You can use this option to apply one of the predefined scale sizes, or you can specify your own value.

Specifying your own value gives you a lot of flexibility and you can have your own size for all elements on the screen.

Open the Start menu, search for Settings and open it.

Click “System” on the next screen to open the system settings menu.

Select Show from the options available in the left sidebar.

On the right sidebar, you will see the “Scale and Layout” section. Click the drop-down menu to resize text, attachments, and other items, and select a scale value.

Your changes will be reflected immediately and all screen elements, including desktop icons, will be either large or small.
To specify a custom scale, click the Advanced Scaling Settings option.

On the next screen, you can enter a value in the only text box on the screen. This value should be between 100 and 500. Then click Apply to apply the changes to the system.

Use the keyboard shortcut to change the size of the desktop icon

If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts to accomplish your tasks, there is a shortcut to resize desktop icons. It offers four options for the size of desktop icons.

Press and hold the Shift and Ctrl keys on your keyboard.

While holding down the above buttons, press one of the following keys to resize the icon on the desktop:
1 – Pressing this number increases the size of the icons on the desktop.
2 – this number increases the desktop icons
3 – changes the desktop icons to medium size
4 – makes the desktop icons smaller

Make sure you are using the numeric keys at the top of the keyboard and not the numeric keypad. The number keys on the numeric keypad do not work for this task.

Change the screen resolution to increase / decrease the size of the desktop icon

Your computer screen resolution determines the size of your desktop icons. By changing this resolution, you can enlarge and shrink the desktop icons.

Be aware that this will resize all other items, not just the desktop icons.

Use Cortana Search to launch the Settings app.

Select the System option on the next screen.

Click Show from the options available in the left sidebar.

On the right sidebar, you will see a drop-down menu titled Screen Resolution. Click this drop-down menu and choose a new screen resolution.

If you choose a higher resolution, your icons will be smaller. Choosing a lower resolution will make your icons appear larger.

Edit a registry key to resize the Windows desktop icon

Windows allows you to change many settings on your computer using the registry, including changing the size of desktop icons.

There is an entry in the registry for the size of your desktop icon, and you can change this entry to make the icons smaller or larger. Make sure you do not touch any parameters other than those listed below, otherwise you risk damaging the operating system.

Press the Windows key + R keys at the same time to open the Run window.
Type the following in the field on the screen and press Enter.
regedit

Navigate to the following path when Registry Editor opens. Do not close this window.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows Shell Bags 1 Desktop
Press Windows + R keys, type the following command in the Run box and press Enter.
cmd

Type the following command in the Command Prompt window and press Enter. This will close the explorer process on your system and your screen will go blank. Do not close this window even after executing the command.
taskkill / f / im explorer.exe

In the Registry Editor window, find the entry labeled IconSize in the right pane and double-click it to open it.

Select Decimal as base.
In the Value field, enter one of the following values ??and click OK.
32 – this’ will make your icons smaller
48 – this will make your icons medium size
96 – this will make your icons bigger
256 – this will make your icons very large

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