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How can I modify the size of icons on the desktop?
John Savill
March 4, 1999
1 Min Read
A. As you may be aware you can change the size of icons in Explorer by selecting the Large icon/Small icon from the view menu. You can actually make the icons even bigger!
Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
Move to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopWindowMetrics
Double click on "Shell Icon Size"
Modify to the size you want (increase by 16), e.g. 48 or 64. Click OK
Close the registry editor
If large icons are selected in Explorer you will now see the new size, you don't need to logoff, just change folders.
It's also possible to change the icons for the small icon/start menu
Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
Move to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopWindowMetrics
From the Edit menu select New - String
Edit a name of "Shell Small Icon Size"
Double click the new value and set to the size you want, its 16 by default, but again could be 32,48,64 etc.
Logoff and on again for the change to take effect.
To change the number of colours the icons use perform the following:
Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
Move to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopWindowMetrics
Double click on "Shell Icon BPP"
Modify to 4 for 16 colours, 8 for 256, 16 for 65536, 24 for 16 miillion and 32 for true colour
Close the registry editor
Again you need to logoff for the change to take effect.
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