Microsoft is working heavily on improving Windows 10 UI by including fluent elements. With Windows 10 build 21343, the company tool this process to the next level by adding new icons to File Explorer. If you don’t Microsoft has already updated icons for various in-built apps Mail and Calendar, Notepad, and even more.
Windows 10 builds 21343 in the dev channel is part of version 21H2, due to release by the end of 2021. In case, you can’t wait for that much time to hand-on new fluent design icons, then the good thing is that you can install the Windows 10 new icon pack to Windows 10 stable version accompanied by Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows XP.
Most of the new icons are available in Shell32.dll and Imageres.dll files in the current build of Windows 10 21343 and enthusiasts have extracted those system icons to ICO files. You can use those icons to apply on all versions of Windows OS.
Download New Windows 10 Icons and Install in Windows 7 and 8
Download New Windows 10 Icons from this link (mirror) shared by Reddit user Random_Vandal.
Extract the zip file using the default archiving tool. The zip file contains 663 files and consumes about 35MB of the device storage.
You can save Windows 10 (builds 21343) icon folder to the preferred location of your device. You can use these fluent Windows icons for desktop shortcuts and customization. For your help, here’s how you can use new Windows 10 icons in an earlier version of Windows.
Note – In upcoming lines, we will show you how to use these system icon in Windows 7
Head over to Users folder, usually C:\users\[your name]
Here, make a right-click on the user folder of choice, lets say Downloads and select Properties from the menu.
Switch to Customize tab, and then click on the Change icon button.
From the window, click on the Browse button. Doing this will open the Browse window.
Here head over to Windows 10 (builds 21343) icon folder that you have downloaded above.
Select the one that you think is perfect, click Open/OK, and then Apply/OK. You can repeat the same steps for all user folders. The current version of Windows 10 is using the following icons for Users folder items:
- Desktop: imageres-175.ico
- Documents: shell32-127.ico
- Downloads: imageres-176.ico
- Music: shell32-129.ico
- Pictures: shell32-128.ico
- Video: shell32-130.ico
If you’re bored of using the legacy Recycle bin icon, and then this icon pack has Fluent icon for Recycle bin too.
What are your thoughts about the new Windows 10 icon pack? We would like to hear from you in the comments.