Add a flair of personality to Windows 11 by making your own desktop icons.

Many users add shortcuts for opening software and tools to the Windows 11 desktop. Shortcuts added will have default icons, but you don’t have to stick with them. You can instead design custom icons and add them to shortcuts on the desktop.

To set up custom Windows 11 desktop icons, you’ll need to have suitable design software installed. Paint 3D and Junior Icon Editor are two freeware software packages with which you can create icons. This is how you can set up desktop icons with Junior Icon Editor and Paint 3D.

Paint 3D is a more advanced Paint version with additional tools for adding 3D shapes and stickers. Windows 10 includes that app, but it doesn’t come pre-installed on Microsoft’s latest platform. Nevertheless, it’s easy to restore that app in Windows 11. You can create a desktop icon with Paint 3D in Windows 11 like this:

An alternative option is to save your image as a BMP file in Paint 3D. You can select to add icon-sized images with the BMP format to desktop shortcuts. However, BMP image icons won’t have transparent backgrounds.

If you want your icon to have a transparent background, you’ll need to save the image as a PNG as instructed above. Then you can convert that PNG image to a transparent icon with the required ICO format. This is how you can convert your icon’s PNG file to ICO with Online-Convert.com’s conversion web app:

Now you can add your icon to a shortcut on Windows 11’s desktop. Right-click a shortcut you want to apply the new icon to and select Properties. Press Change Icon to bring up an icon selection window. Click Browse, select your custom icon and press Open to confirm. Select the OK > Apply options to add it.

Junior Icon Editor is software designed specifically for creating custom icons. That software enables you to design and save icons with the ICO format, so you don’t need to convert images. However, it doesn’t include any options for adding 3D shapes and stickers to icon designs like those in Paint 3D. You can create custom icons for your desktop with Junior Icon Editor like this:

Junior Icon Editor has relatively standard-fare design tools to set up icons with. You can select Pencil, Airbrush, and Paintbrush options in its toolkit. Click the small arrows on the Paintbrush and Airbrush buttons to select different brush styles and thickness levels for those tools.

This design software includes options for adding basic filled or empty rectangles and squares to icons. Plus you can select to add straight and curved lines and arcs. Paint 3D has 24 2D shape options along with 3D objects and models, which is somewhat better.

Junior Icon Editor’s grid feature, enabled by default, is a useful addition. Its grid consists of many small squares that help you design cleaner, symmetrical icons. Zooming in up close to the grid will give you greater design control over finer details.

You don’t necessarily have to start icons from scratch in Junior Icon Editor. Instead, you can import and edit existing software icons or those downloaded from the web by clicking File > Open. However, you’ll need to extract application icons with IconViewer first before you can import them. Alternatively, you can select to open image files and then save them in the ICO format.

So, now you can liven up your Windows 11 desktop by replacing some dull default icons with more stylish custom-designed alternatives. There are many other apps with which you can design icons, but Paint 3D and Junior Icon Editor probably pack in enough editing tools to satisfy the majority of users. You can easily set up visually appealing shortcut icons in Windows 11 and 10 with both software packages.

Jack has been a freelance tech journalist for more than a decade. He has covered Windows Vista, 7, 10, and 11 topics within a multitude of guides for MakeUseOf and numerous other websites.

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