Change Libraries Folder Icon in Windows 10

Today, we'll see how to change the icon of the Libraries folder visible in File Explorer. Windows 10 does not come with an option to change it, but it is still possible.

Libraries is a special folder in Windows, introduced in Windows 7. It allows you to create libraries - special folders which can aggregate files from several different folders and show it under a single, unified view. A library is an indexed location, meaning Windows Search will be completed faster in a library compared to a regular non-indexed folder. In Windows 7, when you opened Explorer using the mouse, it opened the Libraries folder.

By default, Windows 10 comes with the following libraries:

• Documents
• Music
• Pictures
• Videos
• Camera Roll
• Saved Pictures

Note: If the Libraries folder is not visible in your File Explorer, see the article:

Enable Libraries in File Explorer navigation pane in Windows 10

If you are bored with the default icon of the libraries folder, do the following to change it.

To change the Libraries folder icon in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Go to the following Registry key:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}

   Tip: How to jump to the desired registry key with one click. If you don't have such a key, you can create it manually.
   The path name is a GUID which describes the Libraries virtual folder, so once you create it here, you will be able to customize the folder. Any changes you make here, e.g. a custom icon which we are going to set, will affect only your user account. Other user accounts won't have this change.

3. Here, you may have the subkey DefaultIcon. If it is missing there, create it yourself. 
4. Under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\CLSID\{031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}\DefaultIcon, set the default (empty) string value on the right to the full path to the icon file you want to set.
5. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account. Alternatively, you can restart the Explorer shell.

Voila, the File Explorer app will use your custom icon instead of the default one.
Before:

After:

Instead of the full path to the icon file, you can use icons from system files. For example, if you set the string parameter to the following value:

imageres.dll,-1024

Then the icon will be set to the good old Favorites icon. See the screenshot:

That's it.