I don’t know if I’m just going crazy, but I could swear that the icons (buttons?) on my Taskbar were bigger before the latest update. I’m running Windows 10. Can these icons shrink down?
You’re not going crazy! You can indeed switch between small and regular size buttons on your Taskbar, which is great if you’ve got a small or low resolution screen, but can be a bit crazy if you’ve got a high res screen that’s plenty big enough to double as a TV. Now this isn’t to say that there aren’t a hundred other reasons that Windows 10 could be driving you around the bend, particularly if you’re still using and disliking the Startup Screen because you haven’t switched back to the Start Menu style of all earlier versions of Windows.
There’s actually quite a lot you can change with the Win10 Taskbar, actually, from what edge of the screen it lives on to whether it automatically hides when you’re not using it, just to magically appear whenever you move the cursor into the right spot, to whether sections expand and contract based on use or are “locked” to specific sizes.
To start, though, I’ve simulated what you’re seeing by making my own Taskbar icons small. You can see the dramatic difference in size between the app and file icons versus the Taskbar buttons:
I don’t mind small icons, personally, but these might be a bit too small on my 15″ high-res screen. To change it you might follow my usual advice and just do a Cortana search for “taskbar” but, for once, that’s a fail:
None of these are what you seek.
Instead, right click anywhere that’s empty on your Desktop itself to pull up the contextual menu:
You can see from the image, you want to choose “Personalize” to proceed. Do so and you’ll see the Settings window pop up with your appearance related settings. On the left side click on “Taskbar”, and here’s what you get:
Notice the fourth option on the right side, under “Taskbar”: “Use small taskbar buttons”. If you’re seeing it blue, that means this option is on and you’re getting smaller than normal taskbar buttons. Not good!
Change it by clicking on the little slider graphic so that it shows “Off” and is white, not blue. As you do that, the Taskbar will update and suddenly your icon size to Taskbar button size becomes a lot more pleasing:
Not a massive difference, but they’re definitely bigger. And isn’t that a lot easier than just going crazy? 🙂
Thanks for this tip. On a similar theme, is there a way to increase the tiny button sizes of the controls in Windows Media Player (version 12.0.14393.1198)? I’ve done Google searches, so far without finding a solution.