Subscribe to How-To Geek

Resize Icons Quickly in Windows 7 or Vista Explorer

If you are in a folder and would like to quickly resize the icons, there’s a shortcut you can use with your mouse wheel to resize the icons. This is a great way to show off the beauty of the new vector icons in Vista to your friends.

Just hold down the Ctrl key, and scroll the mouse wheel in any folder. The icons will immediately resize bigger or smaller.

Check out the new Windows Media Player icon scaled really huge:

Sweet!

The same thing works wherever you are in Windows. You can cycle between the different views this way.

| More
This article was originally written on 01/7/07 Tagged with: Managing Files and Folders, Windows 7, Windows Vista

Daily Email Updates

You can get our how-to articles in your inbox each day for free. Just enter your name and email below:


Name:
Email:

Comments (9)

  1. Sean

    Great hint , I often find myself switching Icon views in Vista , This way is so easy and so simple

  2. Paul

    Fantastic tip, it even works for the desktop icons where normally you cant make them very small using the appearance tab.

  3. Juney

    Thank for your icon re-sizing tip. I installed Vista a few days ago and have spent hours downloading monitor drivers, blah blah.. to fix this problem. In a heartbeat your tip fixed this desktop icon thing. Thanks so much.

  4. Dell

    gosh… that’s sweet… i spend 20 mins trying to figure out from the system how to resize the icons… Thanks…. Ü

  5. Spacegold

    On my system you have to depress the mouse wheel for this trick to work, but then it does. Thanks, Geek.

  6. Simon

    Does anyone know if it’s possible to do this with a laptop touch pad?

    Cheers

  7. Ben

    Yes Simon, I just did it. As long as you have the side scroller thing enabled on the touch pad, it works.

  8. John Hoff

    Whenever I resize the icons on my desktop and then reboot they revert back to their original size.

    Any ideas on how to save my settings in Windows Vista?

  9. kas

    nothing new it was on xp as well. It also makes the zoom in ms word increase and decrease as wwell as excel. Any tips on how to use it with a laptop? It didn’t work on my laptop


Leave a Comment




Leave your friendly comment here.

If you have a computer help question, click here to leave it on the forums instead.

Note: Your comment may not show up immediately on the site.

Our Friends
Getting Started


About How-To Geek
What Is That Process?
svchost.exe
jusched.exe
dwm.exe
ctfmon.exe
wmpnetwk.exe
wmpnscfg.exe
rundll32.exe
wfcrun32.exe
Ipoint.exe
Itype.exe
Wfica32.exe
Mobsync.exe
conhost.exe
Dpupdchk.exe Adobe_Updater.exe

Copyright © 2006-2009 HowToGeek.com. All Rights Reserved.