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Customize Your Folder Icons in Windows XP

Scott pointed me in the direction of an interesting utility for Windows XP that will let you "skin" your icons by replacing the built-in folder icons with custom icons, and even assign a different color for different folders.

After installation, open the iColorFolder Skin Selector dialog to see a number of built-in skins to choose from. If you want to apply the look across all regular folders automatically, you'll need to choose the option for "Use generic folder icon defined in the skin".

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Note that you'll need to install the additional skin pack from the download page to see this particular icon.

By right-clicking on a folder in Windows Explorer, you can choose a different color from the new Color Label menu.

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If you choose the "Custom…" item from the menu, you'll be able to pick any icon you'd like for that folder, including the ability to browse for icons not shown.

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The new colorized icons are definitely a lot more pleasant to look at.

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You can actually change the default icon for almost any type of file by using the new Change Icon. This is actually a zip file, but I changed the icon to… not sure what that is.

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The best part about this utility is that there's no resident process taking up memory. It just uses the built-in mechanisms to set the icons and then exits.

Download iColorFolder from SourceForge

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 10/15/07 and tagged with: Windows

Comments (4)

  1. djxspike

    Ugh. It freakin re-arranges your desktop icons! install with caution!

  2. The Geek

    @djxspike:

    Sorry about that, my icons are auto-arranged so I didn't notice that it does that. Will make a note to test that for future articles.

  3. Antwon Starr

    ok, this may seem trivial to a lot of you, but when i download the updated drivers for my video card, which happens to be an old crappy nvidia gforce2 mx/mx400, from the windows update site, and install them, then re-boot my pc, everything goes CRAZY !! everything is switched to GIANT size, icons and all, EVERYTHING !!! i have tried re-setting the resolution and everything i can think of, but nothing seems to help. so, am i just stuck with the older drivers or what ???? also, is there a downloadable program that will allow me to overclock my system and/or video card ??? THANX IN ADVANCE ………

    Anthony

  4. GW Gonyaw

    need to solve problem with folder customize. i like to use pictures to quickly tell me a folders contents but this option isnt working on my vista system. whats wrong?


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