Windows XP Folder Icon Customization - How To

Customizing Folder Icons in Windows XP with iColorFolder

A helpful tool for Windows XP, recommended by Scott, allows users to personalize their icons. This utility enables the replacement of standard folder icons with custom designs. Furthermore, it facilitates the assignment of distinct colors to different folders for enhanced organization.

Applying Skins and Colors

Upon installation, the iColorFolder Skin Selector dialog appears, presenting a selection of pre-designed skins. To uniformly apply a chosen aesthetic to all standard folders, select the option to utilize the generic folder icon defined within the selected skin.

It's important to note that accessing the full range of icons requires downloading and installing the additional skin pack from the official download page.

A convenient Color Label menu is added to the right-click context menu within Windows Explorer. This allows for quick and easy selection of a different color for any folder.

Custom Icon Selection

Selecting "Custom..." from the menu grants the ability to choose any desired icon for a specific folder. This includes browsing for icons that are not initially displayed in the selection.

The resulting colorized icons significantly improve the visual appeal of the file system.

Changing Default File Icons

The utility also provides a feature to modify the default icon associated with nearly any file type using the "Change Icon" function.

The downloaded file is a zip archive, and in this instance, the icon was altered to an unidentified image.

Resource Efficiency and Download Information

A key benefit of iColorFolder is its minimal system impact. It operates without a persistent background process, conserving memory resources.

The tool leverages existing Windows mechanisms for icon management and exits after applying the changes.

You can download iColorFolder from SourceForge.