{"id":5012,"date":"2008-04-14T16:58:31","date_gmt":"2008-04-14T15:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/how-to-customize-any-icon-on-your-pc\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:32:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:32:16","slug":"how-to-customize-any-icon-on-your-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-customize-any-icon-on-your-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"How to customize any icon on your PC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you want to customize the appearance of your Windows PC, the first few elements you must change are the desktop wallpaper, the screensaver and of course, icons. <strong>Customizing icons<\/strong> is quite easy: simply right click on the correspondent file, select <em>Properties<\/em> and click on the <em>Change Icon<\/em> button. You&#8217;ll open a dialog window where you&#8217;ll be able to select a new icon for your file.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/04\/icons01.jpg\" alt=\"How to customize any icon on your PC\" \/><\/p>\n<p>However, this works only for shortcuts. If you want to <strong>change folder icons<\/strong>, then you have to right click on any given folder, select <em>Properties<\/em> and click on the <em>Customize<\/em> tab. Here you can choose between selecting a picture to spice up the folder icon (and also make it more recognizable) or changing the icon altogether.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/04\/icons02.jpg\" alt=\"How to customize any icon on your PC\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But if you want to <strong>change system icons<\/strong> (that is, those that appear on your desktop labeled as My PC, My Documents, My Network Places and the Recycle bin) you have to follow a different route: right click anywhere on your desktop, select <em>Properties<\/em> and click on the <em>Desktop<\/em> tab. Then click on the <em>Customize Desktop<\/em> button and you&#8217;ll open a window where you can select which system icons to display and customize them in a very easy way.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/04\/icons03.jpg\" alt=\"How to customize any icon on your PC\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Finally, don&#8217;t forget that there are many software programs that can help you customize icons in a variety of ways, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/5-ways-to-make-your-pc-icon-ic\/\">these icon apps<\/a> collected by Nick or the bunch of <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/colored-folders-make-a-happier-pc-user\/\">folder coloring tools<\/a> I wrote about a while ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you want to customize the appearance of your Windows PC, the first few elements you must change are the desktop wallpaper, the screensaver and of course, icons. Customizing icons is quite easy: simply right click on the correspondent file, select Properties and click on the Change Icon button. You&#8217;ll open a dialog window where &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-customize-any-icon-on-your-pc\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How to customize any icon on your PC&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-5012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336201,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5012\/revisions\/336201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5012"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=5012"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=5012"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=5012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}