I’ve figured out most things in the new Windows 8 interface, except I can’t see how to easily reduce or shrink the file icons on my Win8 Desktop. Right now, they’re huge, which is good if I have clumsy fingers and touchscreen, but I have a laptop and excellent motor control, actually. I just want them to be smaller. What’s the easy path, Dave?
Glad to hear you’re finding Windows 8 pretty smooth sailing. I find that there’s a lot of Windows 8 that behind the scenes looks completely identical to the older Windows 7 interface, which itself kinda sometimes still looks like Windows 95. Does Microsoft ever update the less popular administrative windows? 🙂 You’ll see what I mean even in this article, and there’s not much we’re doing that’s very far off the proverbial beaten track…
The thing to remember about Windows 8 is that even though it has the slide-in “charms” icons on the right side of the screen, it’s also the case that you can right-click on things and context menus pop up, and that’s the secret to working with the icon display on your Desktop.
I’ve set my icons to be large for this demo, so the top left corner of my Win8 Desktop looks like this as we start:
Those are some big icons. If you’re curious, the top two are PDF files, hence the funky “open leaflet on a red box” icon.
A right-click on the Desktop itself reveals a very useful menu of options:
“Aha!” I can hear you say. Indeed, you can see that the “View” menu lets you quickly choose between large, medium and small icons, along with changing how icons are arranged and aligned on the screen.
Choose “Small icons” and they all shrink, without anything actually moving, which leads everything to look rather sparse:
Here’s where choosing “Sort by” can be very helpful:
When I Sort by “Item type”, everything tightens up quite attractively:
Looking at the primary context menu, give the bottom option — “Personalize” — a click too and you’ll see the Windows 8 Desktop Personalization window:
Want to change your Desktop icons? Okay, click on “Change desktop icons”… and suddenly you’re in a window that looks like it was designed about a decade ago:
I will strongly discourage you from downloading any sort of program that changes your Desktop icons, however, because it’s a classic vector for malware to be installed (along with programs that change your cursor shape). Avoid these at all costs.
Instead, look at the Personalization window and you’ll notice that under the “Original Win8 Theme” there’s a link “Get more themes online”.
Click on that to go to Microsoft’s theme library:
Gorgeous themes, hundreds of them, and they’re all free for the downloading and installing. It’s easy. I grabbed a few myself as part of this demo, and while most of them don’t actually change Desktop icons, some of them can do just that. Regardless, isn’t it fun to have a new and lively desktop image?