Set Details, Content or List view for Desktop icons in Windows 10
Out-of-the-box, Windows 10 gives you only three sizes for Desktop icons: Large, Medium and Small. Although you can resize them using Ctrl+mouse wheel, you can't change them to any view like Explorer. In this article, we will see how to apply any Explorer view to Desktop icons.
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As you may already know, you can adjust the Desktop icon size by right clicking the Desktop and choosing an option from the View menu:
An alternative and faster way is to use CTRL+Mouse Wheel trick which we covered in detail here: Tip: Resize icons quickly on the Desktop or in a folder in Windows 10
But a lesser known option in Windows 10 is the ability to switch to any Explorer view, including Details, Content or List view for desktop icons! Here is how it can be done.
- Minimize all opened windows. You can press Win + D shortcut keys on the keyboard to do it quickly.
- Select any icon on the Desktop.
- Now press one of these hotkeys:
Shortcut View Ctrl + Shift + 1 Extra Large Icons Ctrl + Shift + 2 Large Icons Ctrl + Shift + 3 Medium Icons Ctrl + Shift + 4 Small Icons Ctrl + Shift + 5 List Ctrl + Shift + 6 Details Ctrl + Shift + 7 Tiles Ctrl + Shift + 8 Content
You will realize that these are the same hotkeys which can be used in Explorer.
While List, Details, Tiles and Content views are not listed in the Desktop context menu as options, they can be applied to Desktop icons anyway.
See the screenshots below.
Windows 10 Desktop - Details view.
Windows 10 Desktop - Tiles view.
Windows 10 Desktop - List view.
Windows 10 Desktop - Content view.
Also, you can adjust the icon size for any of these views using the CTRL+Mouse Wheel trick mentioned above. Here is the Details view with adjusted icon size:
This trick also works in Windows 8/8.1 also but not Windows 7.
The following video demonstrates this trick in action:
Tip: You can subscribe to Winaero at YouTube.
Bonus tip: Yet another way to gradually zoom in/zoom out desktop icon sizes is to use our AutoHotkey script which uses CTRL + +/- hotkeys.
That's it.
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Haha, this is so stupid. I love it!
This is not working anymore since W10 Creators Update. I tried many times, and it’s not working anymore. Any help?
As of Nov 29 2017 this NO LONGER WORKS
it stops at #4… #5 and up do not change the settings, and honestly, that BLOWS
anyone have a solution to this???
Yep, they have “fixed” this feature.
I waited years for this feature and they go and remove it. Typical Windows.
How do we unfix this feature .. does anyone know of any utility to fix this
no idea. I miss this bug too :-)
While not as flexible as this method the tiny application deskview lets you display icon text in a list-like format.