Why have my icons changed on my desktop

If your Desktop has suddenly changed to Tiles view mode on your Windows computer, then you may have accidentally hit a shortcut key that switches the folder view mode. This article tells you how to restore Desktops default view back.

This may also occur due to folder view corruption [i.e., Bags registry key.]

How to Reset the Desktop View Mode to Default

To reset the desktop view mode to icons, use one of the following methods:

Option 1: Change the Desktop view mode via the right-click menu

Right-click Desktop, click View, and select one of the icon views Small, Medium, or Large.

Option 2: Change the Desktop view mode using Keyboard

Here are the keyboard combinations you can use to change the desktop view. First, click an empty area on the desktop in order to set the focus on the desktop.

• 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 + 7 [Content*]

* Ctrl + Shift + 7 [Content*] mode doesnt seem to work when I tested on Windows 10. All it does is set the view mode to Tiles, but icons get shrunk slightly compared to the Ctrl + Shift + 7[Tiles] view mode.

Option 3: Change the Desktop view mode via the Registry

1. Exit the Explorer shell cleanly. See How to Exit Explorer and Restart Explorer. Dont restart the Explorer shell yet.
2. Open Task Manager using Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
3. From the Task Manager, click File, Run new task.
4. Type regedit.exe and click OK.
5. In the Registry Editor, go to the following branch:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\1\Desktop
6. Delete the two values, namely: LogicalViewMode and Mode
7. Exit the Registry Editor.
8. Create a new explorer.exe task from Task Manager.

This restarts the Explorer shell, and the Desktop view mode should be reset to the default settings.

More Information

LogicalViewMode registry value can use one of the following value data.

• 1 [DETAILS]
• 2 [TILES]
• 3 [ICONS]
• 4 [LIST]
• 5 [CONTENT]

Mode can use one of the following value data.

• 1 [ICON]
• 2 [SMALLICON]
• 3 [LIST]
• 4 [DETAILS]
• 5 [THUMBNAIL]
• 6 [TILE]
• 7 [THUMBSTRIP]
• 8 [CONTENT]

The Microsoft technical articles FOLDERVIEWMODE & FOLDERLOGICALVIEWMODE enumeration have all the information about the folder view modes.