Customizing Windows 10 Taskbar Icons – Complete Guide

Windows 10 comes with many customization options to make your device feel an extension of yourself. While the stock icons seem okay and do the job, the icons haven’t received any update in a while. This makes them feel monotonous and boring.

In this article, we shall discuss everything there is you can do with icons, including customizing Windows 10 taskbar icons and how to change an icon on Windows 10. Hang out till the end of the article to check out how to customize app icons for an added personal touch.

(Also read: System Tray Icons missing)

Windows 10 Taskbar Icons

In the earlier versions of Windows, the taskbar icons were not customizable. The Windows 10 taskbar icons were automatically added and removed depending upon the app that you were running, or the service you were using.

With Windows 10, this all changed as users can now customize what icons show up in the taskbar. This is a very welcome change among the community, as users can now remove the icons that they do not want to see in the taskbar.

In terms of the application icons, you are very limited in what you can do. Let us take a brief look at what you do to change taskbar icons.

• Show Search icon: shows or hides the search icon
• Show Cortana button: adds or removes the Cortana icon in the taskbar.
• Show task view button: adds or removes the task view button.

Apart from this, you can pin individual applications to the taskbar itself, or pin contextual options to the right click additional menu as shown in the image below.

To add or remove system icons from the taskbar notification area, follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app using the keyboard shortcut Win + I.
2. Go to the Personalization section.
3. From the left pane, select Taskbar.
4. In the right column, you will have to scroll down to the Notification area section.

5. Here, first select the ‘Select which icons appear on the taskbar’ option.
6. You will be able to select which apps and services can display icons on the taskbar, and which icons will be moved to the extended notification area. Simply turn the toggle according to your needs.

7. Next, go back to the previous screen and select the ‘Turn system icons on or off’ option.
8. Here, turn the toggle towards off for the icons that you do not want to see on your taskbar notification area.

As simple as that, you can change the Windows 10 taskbar icons according to what you wish to see on your screen.

How To Change An Icon On Windows 10?

The icon customization is a bit complex in Windows 10. Let us discuss the entire process in brief, so that you can change any icon on your Windows 10 desktop.

First, you will require an image or an icon pack, that you will apply to your Windows 10 PC. In Windows 10, the supported extensions for icons are .ico, .dll, and .exe formats. You can get some amazing icon packs from IconArchive, GraphicBurger, FlatIcon, etc.

If you want to customize your PC using your own images, there is a way to use .png images as icons for your applications. To do this, you will have to make use of an online .png to .ico converter like ConvertICO to convert your images to icon packs.

Once you have your icons ready, follow these steps:

1. Right click on the desktop shortcut for the app you want to customize. If a desktop icon does not exist, you will need to go to the installation folder and create one.
2. Select Properties from the context menu that appears.
3. Make sure you are on the Shortcut tab, and click on the Change icon… button near the end of the Properties window.

4. In the Change Icon dialog that appears, click on the Browse… button.

5. Navigate to the icon pack that you downloaded or created using the converter.
6. Click on Open to add all the icons in the icon pack to your computer.
7. Select the icon that you wish to set for the application and select OK.
8. Finally click on Apply to finalize your changes.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it. Now you know how to manipulate the Windows 10 taskbar icons, and how to change an icon on Windows 10 using the method provided above. Comment below if you found this useful, and to discuss further the same.