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Set Icons in Vista to Open With a Single Click Instead of Double-Click

One of our readers wrote in yesterday asking about how to set Windows Vista to open files and folders with a single click, and I realized that was something I'd never written about before, so I figured I'd write it up.

This change is nothing new, the setting has existed since Windows 9x and likely most of you know how to activate it, but in case you don't, here's the quick and easy setting change.

With this change, just hover over an icon and you'll see the underline:

 image

And a single click will open up the folder.

Changing the Setting

Open up any folder, click on Organize and then Folder and Search options.

image

Then change the "Click items as follows" section to "Single-click" instead of "Double-click".

image

You'll notice the setting underneath it, which determines whether icon titles are underlined or not by default. The default setting is only when you point at them, so your icons will look normal:

image

If you change that setting to "Underline icon titles consistent with my browser", you'll see the titles on all items, all the time:

image

Personally I just prefer to leave Vista to the default double-click, but a lot of people prefer single clicking, and now you know how to do it.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 07/22/08 and tagged with: Windows Vista, Desktop Customization

Disclaimer: Many of our articles require making changes to your system. While we fully test and stand by our advice, there is still the potential for problems when making any configuration changes. Please be careful.

Comments (4)

  1. Michael

    Thank you!

  2. Nxqd3051990

    It's an old trick from Windows, not only Vista :) It's remind able

  3. 0zSpitt

    i use a logitech trackball mouse, i've been using the single click for a while, i like the speed.

  4. Chrozinc

    Or you can go to control panel-select classic view-folder options….


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