OK I like the look of vista more than the teenagers abominable idea of a desktop that was XP and bliss…… ahh look at the purty colours.
However I’ve been head scratching about the mickey mouse size of the icons they’re huge and I hate them – went all the way through personalize (sic) (come on guys I know it’s the same language but can’t we have regionalised spelling appropriate to the region please?) to no avail and then I looked again – right click on desktop > view
> classic icons…. sanity returns
sometimes you can’t see the trees for the wood
there’s even a large icons option for people with enormous displays or really really bad eyesight
UPDATE: you can also change the size of the icons by clicking on the desktop and moving the mouse wheel back and forth whilst holding down the left ctrl key ( check out the size they can get to )
April 13, 2007 at 2:31 pm |
Thanks for the quick and easy to follow explanation of how to make the icons smaller, much appreciated
April 13, 2007 at 4:33 pm |
cheers John – glad to be of service, bizarrely this is one of the most popular landing pages on my blog and you’re the first to say thanks – much appreciated, shows good manners aren’t dead
April 18, 2007 at 9:47 pm |
Thanks! been searching forever!
April 18, 2007 at 11:11 pm |
no probs leslee enjoy your rediscovered desktop real estate
May 8, 2007 at 3:51 am |
YOU ROCK!
It worked like a charm …. thanks for the help!
June 10, 2007 at 10:00 pm |
Brilliant! I couldn’t stand the HUGE icons. : þ
Thanks for making it quick and easy!
June 10, 2007 at 10:06 pm |
no problem siobhan – glad to be of service
August 17, 2007 at 11:13 am |
Shot mate. Now I can see my screen again. I did something and all my icons went king size on me.
August 17, 2007 at 4:02 pm |
I’m guessing mouse wheel and control I do it all the time – works across the office suite as well :)
August 18, 2007 at 9:09 pm |
thanks m8 i have been searching forever.cheers
August 25, 2007 at 8:49 pm |
Thankyou so much! I got Vista today, and have been loving it except for the icons!! Half of them were so pixelated it was ridiculous!
September 10, 2007 at 1:23 am |
Thanks Dude! I searched throgh Vista as in XP to make the icons smaller to a dead end. I searched and found this page. Thanks Dude, you do rock! Great fix!
September 20, 2007 at 10:49 pm |
thnx for the info iv been looking for this for weeks after i put vista back on those huge icons killll me but now their perfect thnak you
September 28, 2007 at 9:29 am |
Thank you, everything should be so easy?
The Best!
October 10, 2007 at 10:40 pm |
Well done, thanks. Very well written and most probably the most informative.
October 15, 2007 at 7:24 am |
LOL, tnx the size of the icons was really shitting me (yes i went thru all the personalise crap to lol) much tnx verry helpfull =D
November 7, 2007 at 10:13 am |
Man … this helped a LOT!! Thanx!! Keep up the good work!!
November 8, 2007 at 11:00 pm |
Thank you for that quick tip. The larger icons in Vista are nasty. :)
November 13, 2007 at 10:16 am |
Brilliant. For once a straightfoward solution to an annoying little (big) thing!
I wonder how people find out about things like holding left ctrl key while rotating mouse wheel.
November 18, 2007 at 6:08 pm |
thank you!
November 18, 2007 at 6:09 pm |
thank you
November 20, 2007 at 4:31 am |
Amazing!!!
December 1, 2007 at 4:50 pm |
great, tyty!
December 6, 2007 at 12:58 am |
well I’ve been very lax recently but all the positive comments are really gratifying long live politeness ty to you peeps
December 23, 2007 at 7:40 pm |
very helpful, the answer was right under the nose the whole time :P
December 29, 2007 at 4:00 am |
so obvious! *smacks head* now i can enjoy my beautiful video wallpaper the way i have always dreamed of!
thank you!
January 8, 2008 at 11:36 am |
Easy when you know how, LOL I’ve been putting up with those oversize and not very clever looking icons for months now. Thank you, thank you, thank you Mashup. What a relief!
March 1, 2008 at 5:39 pm |
Amazing that almost a year later it still comes up in google and is VERY useful. Thanks!!!
March 9, 2008 at 1:10 pm |
no probs ralf – good to see I’ve pushed channel 9 off te top spot again :)
March 18, 2008 at 6:53 am |
THANK YOU!!!!!!!! The size has been bothering me for SOOO long and now i fixed it!
THANK YOU!!!!!!
March 28, 2008 at 6:57 am |
THANK you!! Those things were driving me crazy — every time I looked at my desktop I did doubletakes at their hugeness. So much better now.
April 12, 2008 at 8:01 am |
Thank you very much for helping me to humanize (hey, I’m from Brooklyn!) my Vista desktop. Incredible that Microsoft doesn’t make this easy to find!
April 14, 2008 at 8:22 pm |
Hi.. thanks for your help !!! desktop looks much better now !! superb !!
May 13, 2008 at 7:24 pm |
thank you, now I am not overwhelmed by the icons all the time
May 31, 2008 at 1:45 pm |
Thanks for this, really simple and helpful. thanx again
:-)
June 1, 2008 at 9:48 pm |
Thanks–just what I was looking for!
June 3, 2008 at 7:25 am |
thank you immensely…
June 13, 2008 at 8:31 pm |
Good manners may not be dead, but the english language is dying.
I hate how americanised not [ized] everything is now a days, i was walking back from uni few days ago and saw some road workers removing a perfectly good road sign say authorised so i stayed for a while curious and over the top they actually got rid of the s so it was kinda visable and replaced it with a Z is this country going mad???
oh Thank you for the guide up top :)
June 17, 2008 at 2:56 am |
Thank You! I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who felt that Windows thinks we’re all blind.
June 18, 2008 at 4:57 pm |
Excellent help. I lost time trying to figure this out until I thought, hell with it let me google it..
Great post
June 24, 2008 at 8:58 pm |
Thank You!!!!
:)
July 3, 2008 at 9:44 pm |
Thanks man. Those big Icons are now a thing of the past. Cheers!
July 5, 2008 at 10:44 pm |
Thanx!!! I was looking forever for this!
July 6, 2008 at 8:43 pm |
THANK YOU. This was driving me nuts. You’re #1 on the Google search. :-) I am bookmarking this for future reference also.
July 7, 2008 at 3:40 am |
That is sooo awesome. I love you
July 17, 2008 at 12:00 pm |
Thanks! I have the icons at the smallest size and now i have hundreds on my desktop! I never realised the ctrl-wheel trick worked on the desktop!
July 21, 2008 at 9:12 pm |
[...] In alta ordine de idei, prima “problema” cu Vista a fost … cum sa-mi fac icon-urile mai mici. Am gasit imediat, via Google, o mana de ajutor aici. [...]
July 27, 2008 at 11:13 am |
Thank you so so sooo much!
I’ve been trying to fix this for ages, and now I can thanks to your advice.
Cheers!
July 29, 2008 at 12:21 am |
omg thank you SO SO SO much for that update.
i needed to find out how to get them smaller than classic and you found the way to do it! whoo!
thank YOU so much!
July 30, 2008 at 3:13 pm |
More then a year later, and it still helps. Haha :D
August 15, 2008 at 2:38 am |
fantastic thanks for the easy solution to an ugly problem in vista
August 24, 2008 at 2:11 pm |
Just go to Desktop, press CTRL ant move mousewheel up or down
August 27, 2008 at 2:55 am |
GENIUS… though, it is nice to know I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t either figure it out…. or remember how to do it. :)
September 19, 2008 at 4:50 am |
Thanks for the info, been bugging the crap out of me.
September 22, 2008 at 6:59 pm |
Thank you so much! I’ve been trying to figure this out. The big icons were driving me crazy!
October 13, 2008 at 7:01 am |
Thank you.
November 15, 2008 at 8:25 am |
Thank you so much. Just got this laptop… have owned multiple computers and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember how to change the icons on the desktop. I went through the whole appearance/screen resolution madness as well. Thanks so much for the quick and easy reminder… now I have NORMAL icons and not those super large icons.
Kim
December 11, 2008 at 2:21 am |
omg thanks man that was so easy
vista = bang though
December 19, 2008 at 1:15 pm |
many thanks for your tip on how to make the icons smaller on vista
December 24, 2008 at 6:43 pm |
Nor could I see the forest through the trees. Thank you for your post. It’s a shame the option isn’t where so many people seem to expect it. Again, thank you for your post!
January 1, 2009 at 12:30 pm |
THANKS!
Worked Great
Simple and easy explanation of the subject :)
January 5, 2009 at 9:26 pm |
Brilliant….thank you very much.
January 21, 2009 at 6:32 pm |
Wow finally. thanks for this. :)
February 1, 2009 at 7:07 pm |
I now love you forever
March 11, 2009 at 3:06 am |
LOL..there it is…
thanks so much…hahaha..
yeah you’re right
sanity returns…=D
March 27, 2009 at 3:26 pm |
THANK YOU for this! Sometimes the solution can be so simple that it’s hard to think of, LOL… And I just LOVED the tip about the mouse wheel! :-)
March 30, 2009 at 2:35 am |
Thanks! This tip also works in Windows 7, which is really Vista SP2 *wink*
April 5, 2009 at 12:09 am |
Tanks, its so simple but is geniusilly:), it cannot be foud in a normal search, i bealive ive searched for it at leas 30 min, but at the end ive google it so… i ended up here
thanks again
great post
April 23, 2009 at 6:06 am |
Thank you! I am so happy to have the icons normal looking now. ☺
April 26, 2009 at 2:00 am |
yea i did same, spent ages looking threw all control panel etc. thanks
May 12, 2009 at 7:59 pm |
Thanks for the tip just what I was looking for, I despise clunky big icons
May 23, 2009 at 11:39 am |
Couple of years late but thanks for this, I’ve just been through the XP style “right-click – personalize – search & browse for ages – oh hell I’ll just google it” palaver.
BTW “-ize” spellings are fine in British English – the OED prefers them, it doesn’t even have “realise” as a word in OED online!! It’s just that most other publishers prefer “-ise”, and we got taught in school that “-ise” was right. But your teacher was wrong. ;)
May 25, 2009 at 6:26 pm |
U r rock!!!! Superb.. so simple n easy.. I never thought of it.. I was trying to reduce the Icon size.. LOL..
June 19, 2009 at 8:40 pm |
Thanx! Now I can finally see Sora!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!