How to Change Windows Anime Folder Icons

There were a bunch of articles and posts from a few anime-related sites showcasing their anime folders. What amazed me was that the folders were all customized with icons unique to the series– which was pretty useful if you’d like to see where your anime is at a glance.

I for one didn’t know about doing that to my folders — even more so about creating folder icons. After much sweeping over the net about how to do it and how best to do it, I’ve created a nifty little guide for you guys out there that would most likely would want to do the same thing.

First thing a Windows user must know is to how to change his icon. You easily do this can do this by right-clicking the folder and going to Properties. From there, you should see a “Customize” tab. Below the window is the Folder icons option. Click it and a new window should pop up. You have the leisure to choose any icon from the list or browse .ico files at other folders, in case you have downloaded some from the Internet.

Of course, you won’t find any anime icons from the stock list. So you have two choices — you can either download the anime icons from the Internet (if you’re lazy to make your own), or create your own using an image editing software (like Photoshop or GIMP, depends on what you prefer).

To create your own anime folder icon, you must first have the image format of the icon you want. Most icons are created from this format, and the size ranges from 16×16 to 256x256px. For Windows 7 users, most of them prefer the biggest resolution (256px), since they can make the folder icons extra large, and having a smaller resolution icon can give pixelated results.

Let’s use this image I made as an example:

This image is in .png, but you can’t use it yet since it’s not in .ico format. You need an icon converting program, or use online icon converters (like ConvertICO, iConvert and ConvertIcon!). To use an online icon converter, all you need to do is upload the image there, wait for the site to convert it and then save the .ico format right after. Follow the instructions for changing folder icons, and you’re done!

If you’ve done it properly, your folder icon should look like this by now:

If you do this with other anime folders, you might as well not need to read the folder names and just look at the icons for easier browsing.

For those lazy enough to make their own anime folder icons, you can download them from this link (a collection of icons I made plus several more I got from an anon, thanks~). It has most of the famous and current anime titles right now, so it should save you from all the hard work.

I might also upload my own folder icons in the future based on the new series released per season. That’s all I can share for now; good luck and happy icon making!

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