How to Change Icon Size in Windows 11

By default, Windows 11 comes with a normal or medium-sized desktop, taskbar, and file explorer icons. However, if you are going to spend a lot of time staring at your computer, you may want to change the icon to the size you are comfortable with, like small, large, extra-large, or any other size.

If you are having a hard time finding icons on your desktop because they are too small, you can change the icon to large or if you are desktop is cluttered with too many icons, you can resize icons to small to keep your desktop clean and orderly.

In this guide, we will see how to resize Desktop, Taskbar, and File Explorer icons in Windows 11.

Changing Desktop Icons in Windows 11

Changing Desktop icons is very easy and straightforward. With this method, you can resize icons into three sizes: small, medium, or large.

To quickly change the desktop icons size, right-click on an empty space on the desktop and select the ‘View’ option.

Then, select one of the three sizes that work best for you from the expanded context menu or press these shortcut buttons:

Large icons – Ctrl+Shift+2
Medium icons – Ctrl+Shift+3
Smakk icons – Ctrl+Shift+4

Although the ‘Super large icons’ option is not provided in the context menu, you can still change the icons to Extra Large by pressing Ctrl+Shift+1. While keyboard shortcut, make sure to use the number keys on top of the keyword.

Once the option is selected, the icons will automatically adjust to the selected size.

Extra Large Icons

Large Icons

Medium Icons

Small Icons

Or, if you don’t want to see the desktop icons at all, you can also easily hide them and get them back whenever you want them. To that, right-click on an empty space on the desktop, hover over ‘View’, and then select ‘Show desktop icons’ from the context menu.

To unhide all the desktop icons again, right-click on an empty space on the desktop, and select ‘View’ and then ‘Show desktop icons’.

Change Desktop Icons with a Mouse Scroll

In the above method, you can only change your icons to three different preset sizes: small, medium, large, or extra-large. But in this method, you can easily change the desktop icons to any size you want by simply scrolling your mouse wheel.

All you have to do is simply hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard and start scrolling the wheel on your mouse upward or downward to increase or decrease the size, respectively. When you are happy with the icon size, stop scrolling the scrolling mouse button.

Change Desktop Icon Spacing using Registry Editor

In Windows 11, you can not only resize the desktop icons but can also adjust the horizontal and vertical space between the icons to suit your needs. There is no straight way option to change the icon spacing, but it can only be achieved using the Windows Registry.

First, open Windows Registry Editor by searching for ‘Registry Editor’ in the Windows search and opening the app from the result. Or, press Windows+R, type ‘regedit’, and press Enter.

On the Registry Editor, navigate to the following path or copy and paste the below path into the Registry Editor’s address bar and press Enter:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

In the WindowMetrics folder of the registry, you should find the two registry entries in the right pane of the window:

IconSpacing
IconVerticalSpacing

To change the Horizontal Spacing of the icons, double-click the ‘IconSpacing’ registry.

Then, enter a value between a minimum of -480 to a maximum of -2730 in the ‘Value data’ field, and click ‘OK’. Here, we are using ‘-2000’.

Note: The default value of both registries is ‘-1128’, which is the normal size. Increasing the value reduces spacing while decreasing it increases the spacing.

To change the Vertical Spacing of the icons, double-click the ‘IconVerticalSpacing’ registry.

Then, type a value between a minimum of -480 to a maximum of -2730 in the ‘Value data’ field, and click ‘OK’. Here, we are using ‘-1000’.

Once you are done, restart your computer and you will notice the changed vertical and horizontal spacing between icons. Adjusting horizontal will also change the bounding areas of icons.

Change File and Folder Icon Sizes

Similar to the ‘View’ context menu on the desktop of Window 11, the File Explorer also has options to customize the appearance and size of files and folder icons. Follow these steps to resize folder icons in Windows 11:

Open File Explorer and click on the ‘View’ button (Layout and view options) in the toolbar to bring up the drop-down menu. Then, select any of the folder sizes that suit your need: Extra-large, Large, Medium, or Small icons options.

As soon as you select a different icon size, it will automatically resize to accommodate your changes. In the below example we select the small size for icons.

Besides the four size options, you can choose any of the four layout options that can also change icon size depending on the layout style. In the View menu of File Explorer, there are four layout options: List, Detail, Tile, or Content.

By default, when you change the size or layout of the icons in a folder, it will only affect the current folder and no others. However, you can apply the current folder Icon View to all its subfolders and files.

After changing folder icon size or layout in a drive or a folder, click the ‘three-dots’ (Vertical ellipses) button in the File Explorer ribbon and select ‘Options’ from the menu.

In the Folder Options dialog box, switch to the ‘View’ tab and click the ‘Apply to Folders’ button.

Then, click the ‘Yes’ button on the confirmation box.

After that, click ‘OK’ to close the dialog box and apply the changes.

This will apply the current folder’s icon size and layout to all its subfolders and files.

Reset Folder View

If you wish to undo the Folder View settings for all folders and reset them to their original view, do this:

In File Explorer, click the ‘three-dots’ button in the File Explorer ribbon and select ‘Options’ from the menu.

Then, go to the ‘View’ tab and click the ‘Reset Folders’ button.

And click ‘Yes’ for the confirmation box.

Change Taskbar Height and Icon size in Windows 11

Since the Start menu and Taskbar icons are centered in Window 11, it can easily get cluttered if there are too many icons on the taskbar. And there is no native option for changing the taskbar height and icon size, so you have to tweak the Registry Editor to make taskbar icons bigger or smaller.

First, open Windows Registry Editor by pressing Win+R, typing ‘regedit’, and clicking ‘OK’.

When the Registry Editor opens, navigate to the following path or copy and paste the below path into the Registry Editor’s address bar and press Enter

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

After reaching the Advanced folder in the left navigational pane, right-click on ‘Advanced’ and select ‘New’ and then click the ‘DWORD (32-bit) Value’. Or, right-click on any empty space on the right pane and choose ‘New’ > ‘DWORD (32-bit) Value’.

Then, rename the newly created registry entry into this: TaskbarSi.

After that, double-click on ‘TaskbarSi’ and change its Value data to one of the following:

0 – Small size
1 – Medium Size (Default)
2 – Larger Size

In the below example, we are settings the value date to ‘2’ to make the taskbar bigger.

Then, click ‘OK’, close the Registry Editor and restart your computer. Once the system is booted up, you will notice that the taskbar and its icons sizes got changed according to your preference.

Medium-Sized Taskbar:

Large Taskbar:

Small Taskbar:

Quickly Resize Taskbar using the ‘.bat’ files

If you are worried about messing up the Windows registry by editing it yourself, you can use these .bat files we have provided and quickly change the taskbar and its icons size. First, download this zip file with the bat files and extract them into a folder.

Change Taskbar Size Download

To extract the .bat files, right-click the downloaded .zip file (Change Taskbar Size.zip) and select ‘Extract All…’ .

Then, use the ‘Browse’ button to select where you want to extract the files and click the ‘Extract’ button in the wizard.

After the files are extracted, simply double-click (or right-click and select ‘Run as Administrator’) on the relevant bat file to run it and change the taskbar size.

Windows Defender will show you a blue screen prompt with a warning message because you’re running a third-party .bat file. Here, click the ‘More info’ link below the message.

On the next screen, click ‘Run anyway’.

Once you do that, Windows will automatically change your taskbar and its icons size or you will need to restart your system to apply the changes. With these ‘.bat’ files you can quickly switch between the taskbar sizes anytime.

Change the Size of All Icons using Display Scaling in Windows 11

Display Scaling is a setting in Windows 11 that allows you to change the size of text, icons, taskbar, windows, and other user interface elements to make your system more comfortable to see and use. Here’s how you can do that:

First, right-click anywhere on an empty area on the desktop, and select ‘Display settings’. Alternatively, open the Windows Settings app, go to the ‘System’ tab, and click the ‘Display’ option.

Under the Display settings page, scroll down to the ‘Scale & layout’ section, and click the drop-down next to the ‘Scale’ option.

The default scale value is ‘100%’ but you can change it to any of the four percentages: ‘100%’, ‘125%’, ‘150%’, or ‘175%’. If your icons, text, and other elements of the Windows are too small to see, you can change the scale to a higher percentage. In the below example, we are changing it to 125%. For most displays, 125% or 150% is the ideal scale.