Windows lets you choose large, medium, or small desktop icons. But did you know many other size options are available? You can fine-tune the size of your desktop icons with a quick shortcut that involves your mouse wheel.

The standard desktop icon sizes are available in the desktop’s context menu—right-click the desktop, point to view, and select “Large icons,” “Medium icons,” or “Small icons.”

For extra size options, position your mouse cursor over the desktop, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, and scroll the mouse wheel up or down. Stop scrolling and release the Ctrl key when you’ve found your preferred size.

This shortcut lets you select a wider range of desktop icon sizes than the typical desktop context menu does—we counted a range of 28 sizes, from extra tiny to surprisingly huge. The mouse wheel shortcut will give you extra control over resizing your icons, shrinking or enlarging them much more than you otherwise could.

This trick works in File Explorer or Windows Explorer, too. You can quickly resize file and folder icons by holding Ctrl and rotating your mouse’s scroll wheel.

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Chris Hoffman Chris Hoffman
Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read nearly one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek.
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