Taskbar icon size

Question

Taskbar icon size

Anonymous

When I first upgraded to Windows 11, the one problem I had was the size of the icons in the Taskbar. Being visually changed, they were just too small.

After some digging, I found a YouTube video by Kevin Stratvert ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RswaXcWWCo0 ), that, in five steps, resolved the issue. This made the icons about the same size as small desktop icons (Ctrl+Shift+4). This was perfect and I have been quited satisfied with Windows 11 ever since.

Resize icons on taskbar:

Location in registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Click New and then DWORD (32-bit) Value
Set the name of the DWORD Value as “TaskbarSi” and hit the Enter key to save changes.
Large taskbar – TaskbarSi value 2
Restart Windows Explorer

Since applying 2023-02 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 22H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5022913), the icons have reverted tom the original small size, so again, they are difficult to interpret quickly. I have removed the TaskbarSI from the registry and restarted Windows Explorer, the went through the steps above (adding TaskbarSi back), to no avail.

Has anyone else encountered this and are there any known tweaks that will restore the icons to their larger size.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

7 answers

Answer 1

Anonymous

Same here about being visually challenged. Can't believe Microsoft disregard for accesibility, in an operating system with so many years in the market they can't provide a solution and even blocking out somehow the hacks that allow a fix.

0 comments

Answer 2

I had the opposite problem on a touch enabled laptop screen.

The setting in Personalization/Taskbar Behaviors, "Optimize taskbar for touch interactions when this device is used as a tablet" was enabled, and the task bar would remain hidden until I hovered over it. The taskbar buttons were too large once they appeared.

I unchecked that setting and the taskbar returned to the appearance it had before. In my case smaller icons instead of the fisher price sized ones.

Note the setting "Automatically hide the taskbar" was never checked.

Answer 3

It's January 2024 and the same problem exists with Windows 11 version 23H2. If it helps anyone else, I noticed that with the ExplorerPatcher it's adjusting taskbar icon size with this registry key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Dword value: "TaskbarSmallIcons"
Data value: 0

Data value of 0 = large icons
Data value of 1= small icons

It appears to already exist as I see it on my Win10 system as well and it has a default setting of 1, so just change to a 0 and kill/restart explorer.exe to have the change take effect.

Answer 4

Anonymous

Thanks for your reply but I'm going to stay with the smaller icons. I'm reluctant adding third party software to y system.

Again... thanks for your feedback.

0 comments

Answer 5

That latest version broke certain non-supported methods of hacking the Windows UI. That isn't something they would test against. You actually had it good as others got stuck in a non-boot situation from heavier customization.

At this time, you can try start11 for task bar sizes and maybe it will do what you want with the icon sizes (its only free to try) https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/ which seems to not have received the same level of issues. Their customization work appears to have went better here but any unofficial customization can result in extra future issues. Start11 will see its own bugs.

Scale in Display Settings actually increases the task bar size too still. Of course that comes with other changes bundled in with it.

Share via

Taskbar icon size

7 answers