How to Change Folder Icons on Windows 11

Windows 11 comes with very colorful folder icons for some special folders such as Pictures, Downloads or Documents which are all found inside the user profile folder of the currently logged in Windows user. But no such special icons are available for the rest of the folders anywhere on the drive.

If you have a special folder that stores something specific, then you can change its icon to reflect its contents. For example, if you have a folder for keeping MP3 files, then you might want to change its icon to something that shows MP3 files or music.

Here is how we can change the icons of any folder on Windows 11:

1. Right-click on the folder for which you want to change the icon and choose Properties from the menu that appears on your screen.
2. In the properties window for that folder, select the Customize tab.
3. Click on the button labeled Change Icon displayed under the “Folder icons” section.
4. In the next small window that appears, click on the Browse button to select the icon file that you want to use and then click on the OK button.

There are many different types of icon files that can be used for this purpose. The first type if icon file is obviously an ICO file that may contain multiple icons inside it. Then there is ICO library files that have an extension ICL. These files might contain hundreds of icons and we have to specify an index when using these files. Third type of files that we can use are the binary files like EXE or DLL. We can use the icons stored inside these binary files in form of resources.

If you do not have an icon to be used, you can find tons of folder icons from the IconsArchive website at https://iconarchive.com/. You can download the icons that are free for personal use and select them as folder icons.