Icons are one of the main ways we identify programs and documents but they can often be bland and boring especially those default ones assigned by Windows.

One great way to personalise your desktop is to customise your icons. You can use IconChanger to change personal file icons by assigning an icon of your choice to each and every file on your computer. To use it, select the file you wish to personalize and right click it with your mouse. If Icon Changer can change its icon, you will see the Change Icon symbol but bear in mind that not all icons can be changed. You can assign or reset icons for multiple objects at once and to set or reset an icon for a file type, you can launch Icon Changer for any file of the desired type. In the IconPane you will see the content of the file containing the icon used for the current object. IconChanger allows you to automatically search for icons contained in various executable files and DLLs saved on your hard drive. Once you've selected the icon you consider the most suitable, press the "Set" button and you're all changed! Unfortunately, not every icon you select can be changed and in the end, it often becomes more tedious changing the hundreds of icons on your PC than just leaving them as they are.

If you love to personalise your PC and have the time to change your icons, IconChanger is an easy to use and fun program.

Download IconChanger 3.8 in Softonic

Bandoo adds new emotions, more technically ‘emot-icons’, to your Yahoo! and MSN messenger. They are well designed, with a cartoon style and lovely pastel shades. They are also animated, and some are really sweet, like the little angel with shining nimbus that at times flutters its wings, or the shy character with glinting eyes and red cheeks.

The program adds a bar on your messenger, just above where you write your text. There are five menus to choose from, one to add emoticons, the next to add animated text, then Winks, Nudges and User pictures at the end. Each category contains dozens of new animations divided into categories, although, as you might guess, the emoticons selection is far wider.

Unfortunately, each menu takes some time to load all the items it contains and even when you select one, the program has to download it, which again takes few seconds. Although this could mean that you might have new animations every now and again, you will have to pay a price in patience.

Bored with the standard Yahoo! and MSN messenger emoticons? Bring new life to your IM with hundreds of free cartoon style, beautifully coloured animations. The only downside is that the program takes a while to load and then download the emoticons into your chat.

Download Bandoo 2.0 in Softonic

With RealWorld Icon Editor you can create your own images or 3D graphics for Icons. RealWorld Icon Editor features an advanced image to icon conversion tool with batch mode support.

Using 3D editor saves time and most importantly, gives all your icons a uniform look and feel. When generating an icon from a 3D model, you get lighting, occlusion, and perspective transformations for free. You can change them at any time and generate an updated icon in a few seconds.

Download RealWorld Icon Editor 2008.1 (XP/2003/Vista) in Softonic

Pixelformer is a complete icon tool with which you can edit any existent icon or create your own from scratch.

The program features a quite dark interface that doesn't really suit it, but you can't customize it in any way. What really surprised me was the fact that Pixelformer supports layers (something you don't usually find in small editors) and also the possibility to create icons in just about any size from 16x16 to 256x256. What's more, you can create icons from any other image by importing the file into Pixelformer and selecting the area you want.

On the downside, Pixelformer has also some drawbacks. The first one is a rather scarce set of tools, among which I missed the ability to crop and a more powerful zoom tool. There are no special effects or filters to apply to your icons, nor a configuration menu to customize the program's appearance and behavior.

Pixelformer is a great pixel editor with support for layers and many other interesting features, though it lacks some more advanced tools.

Download Pixelformer 0.8.1 in Softonic

As far as Windows customisation tools go, this is definitely one of the better ones out there and that's saying something.

There's lots to argue in it's favour not least it does the job without creating any conflict with your system which is the usual problem. Magic Desktop provides over 2400 icons with which you can change your entire operating system so you're not going to get bored in a hurry. You can replace system icons, the start menu, disk drive icons, files and applications, and much much more. For example, you can create shortcuts that actually animate on the desktop, change the color of Windows, change the home screen, alter the transparency of the taskbar and even add a background image to it. The icing on the cake is that, if you don't like the icons suggested by Magic Desktop, you can actually create your own using your own images.

Ease of use, lots of options and some great Windows effects make this a superb tool for anyone that's bored of Windows but doesn't want to buy Vista.

Download Magic Desktop 11.9 in Softonic

IcoFX is an award winning freeware icon editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. It is designed to work with Windows XP and Windows Vista icons supporting transparency.

With a wealth of tools and more than 40 effects at your fingertips, there’s virtually no limit to the icons you can create. You can convert your favorite images into icons, or icons into images. With IcoFX you can extract icons from other files, including Windows Vista files. You can easily work with multiple files using the batch processing capability of IcoFX.

This is what IcoFX has to offer:

• Support for transparency (alpha channel)
• Batch processing for import, export and extract
• More than 40 effects + custom filter
• Resolutions up to 256x256
• Data types: 2, 16, 256, True Color, True Color + Alpha
• Extract icons from 32 bit exe and dll
• Import and export images
• Transparent, Brighten/Darken, Blur/Sharpen tools

Download IcoFX 1.6 in Softonic

Are you completely bored with the way that Windows looks? Do nyou wish you had more icons or at least better icons to choose from?

Well why not make your own? ArtIcons allows you to create your own as well as make sure that Vista icvons are compatible with Windows XP. The program looks a little like MS Paint but don't let this fool you - this is a very powerful program with lots of cool icon editing features. For a start, it now supports the highest resolution icons possible which means those up to 256 x 256 in dimension, making them suitable for high-DPI displays. This take about 400Kb of disk space, which is more than the standard 25Kb of an XP icon but because the program uses PNG compression, this isn't a problem. Hey presto, you've got high definition XP icon images without the huge file sizes. You can make XP look remarkably like XP from an icon perspective and yet still retain normal use of your favourite operating system. Probably the best feature of this program though is that it makes distinguishing your icons and folders so much easier. There's no need to worry about labelling them correctly - just use the design instead.

A super program for anyone that wants to spice up their desktop or just wants to give XP a bit of a Vista look.

Download ArtIcons 5.19 Standard in Softonic

Digitope Pixelshop is excellent for icon and cursor development. With this full-featured icon and cursor editor, you can create and edit existing icons (ICO), cursors (CUR) and animated cursors (ANI), in all sizes and formats, including the new Windows XP Alpha format.

You can create an icon by using Pixelshop’s easy to use, built-in utility for converting an image (most formats including Adobe Photoshop Images) to an icon, or by using Pixelshop’s simple icon designer interface.

You can also apply several effects to your icons, such as a 3D drop shadow, smoothing or colorizing. Incorporated in Pixelshop is an extensive help file, including tutorials. Create personalized folder icons. Customize your desktop. Add a favicon to your website. Make a cursor. Import Adobe Photoshop files. Modify your icons. With Pixelshop you can.

Download Pixelshop 5.12.7 in Softonic

Falco Icon Studio allows creating, editing and managing icons and other small images. The application handles popular file formats used to store multiple icons of various sizes and all possible color systems.

Falco Icon Studio supports a comprehensive environment for professional designers and graphics producers to create unique icons for software products, application program, games and anything you want!

Download Falco Icon Studio 2.2 in Softonic

This is a powerful, easy to use utility for finding, extracting, creating and editing icons, cursors and managing icon libraries and image lists. Windows Cursor and Icon Editor With IconLover you can:

• Manage icons, static and animated cursors, icon and cursor libraries, image lists
• Create and edit smooth semi-transparent icons, static and animated cursors for Windows XP
• Create and edit icons in standard and custom sizes, with color depth up to 32-bit True Color
• Make stylish icons from your images
• Paint images with gradient and chess fill
• Create multi-layer images
• Modify images with drop shadow, opacity, smooth, negative, grayscale, colorize, rotate, roll and mirror effects
• Import and export ICO, BMP, JPEG, ANI, CUR, GIF, PNG, TGA, TIFF, WMF, WBMP, XPM, XBM and Adobe Photoshop PSD image formats
• Import Mac OS icons from ICNS and RSRC files
• Manage icon libraries for better and more efficient image storage
• Extract icons from Windows executables, libraries and animated cursor files, ZIP and RAR archives
• Download icons from the Internet
• Modify icons inside executables
• Search in folders for icons and cursors
• Convert or apply effects to multiple icons at once
• Customize desktop and folder icons

Download IconLover 4.22 in Softonic

Editing your icons can be one of the best ways of giving your desktop and PC a really individual feel.

Microsoft has always provided some pretty uninspiring icons for all Windows releases and this program is aimed at giving them an extra touch of class. The good thing about IconEdit is that it accepts a huge range of icons formats from ICO, ICL, NIL, EXE and DLL to GIF, TIFF, BMP, and JPEG. It's also extremely easy to use even if the interface is a bit bland. Normally icon sizes are 32x32 pixels, 16x16 and in some rare cases, 48x48 for really big ones. The different size ranges require different tools to edit them effectively and IconEdit2 allows you to do so with speed and a touch of finesse even if you're no Picasso. The interface is similar to Window's own Paint application and the program allows you to modify desktop shortcuts and folder icons as well as substitute your own images instead of the default ones. You can also use it to create convincing Avatars that can be used with IM clients and forum sites. Probably the nicest feature for an imaging novice is the option to create a "transparent" background for any image or icon which usually takes longer in other similar apps.

This is an excellent icon editor that's simple to use but gives you just enough creative scope to make some really natty icons.

Download IconEdit2 5.0 in Softonic

Finding necessary icon images for your shortcuts or documents is not easy task. Before downloading one of those gigantic icon collections, consider that one probably already exists on your hard drive. The average computer contains hundreds, even thousands of different icons "hidden" in a variety of files on your drives and you can get them all with Icon Catcher.

Download Icon Catcher 4.2.33 in Softonic

Most of the icons Windows uses for drives are very boring and generic. The only thing that changes is the letter which is why I like My Drives because it allows you to assign a different icon to each one whether its your internal hard drive or an external drive.

What I like about this is it's much easier to differentiate between drives rather than have to remember a letter. I have so many attached to my PC that it's sometimes difficult to remember what contains what but I somehow find it much easier with different icons. The program comes preinstalled with several different options for logos such as a cellphone, a pendrive, video camera, photo, logo, Windows partition, and so on. However, it's a shame it doesn't come with a lot more because drives can be used to store much more than these - the most obvious being documents - but it doesn't cater for all. On the plus side, it's easy to install and assign icons to your drives. The most annoying thing however is that once you click "Apply Changes" the computer is restarted. This is because Windows can't handle changing the image whilst Windows is operating - even Vista.

My Drives is a clever little program that gives you more control over your drive icons but it's s ahem about all the annoying restarts.

Download My Drives 1.4 in Softonic

Customization has never been in such demand as it is now, and IconCool is another tool for your collection that helps you leave your personal mark on your computer. The program lets you design your own icons, cursors, animated GIFs, and even change the settings for how icons are displayed on your system.

The good news is that there are loads of useful tools, and you’ll be hard pushed to find a more feature-packed icon creation program anywhere. The interface is well balanced with tools grouped aptly around the main editing window. The inclusion of a button to export your icon to Photoshop is a welcome addition, while also indicating that the developer has made an effort to cater for all users’ needs. For creating or editing icons you have the ubiquitous drawing tools, bar an eraser tool, as well as a handy selection of gradient effects that will let you give icons a more modern look and feel.

As you work on your icons, you have a preview in the top right corner of its actual size and you can also hit the test button to see how it looks when placed on the desktop. If you are working on a new set of cursors, there is a separate test window that lets you adjust the hotspot and check how the cursor interacts with a variety of buttons. We liked the fact that there is also an option for customizing the Windows icons, which although may not be expected for an icon editor, is intrinsically linked with customizing Window’s icons.

IconCool isn’t without its faults and our biggest annoyance was the selection tool. The only option you have is to use a rectangular marquee, which isn’t very useful if you are working on any irregularly-shaped icon, not to mention the fact that we experienced a strange glitch whereby for small selections the outline would disappear momentarily only to reappear when the mouse was moved again. The lack of an eraser tool was a slight inconvenience and it might have made sense to have layers, for those occasions when you want to rotate a piece of text without rotating the entire image.

For practically everyone, IconCool will be more than enough to meet their icon design needs, but for those hardcore icon perfectionists, there is seamless integration with Photoshop which will let you get whatever results you want.

Download IconCool Studio 5.26.71125 in Softonic

IconsExtract allows you to extract icons from any file in your system – that is, any file that can be used as icon library.

The program can work with single files or complete folders, extracting all found icons in just a few seconds. I especially liked the possibility to choose any of your current running processes and applications to extract their icons and also the options to filter results by color depth and icon size.

IconsExtract doesn't require installation and includes a very simple interface that is quite self-explanatory. It also displays advanced information about each icon and enables you save them as ICO files, either one by one or saving as many icons as you want simultaneously. You can also copy any of them to the Clipboard for later usage in a third-party graphic tool. Unfortunately I could only save the smallest version of the icon (16x16 pixels), whereas if I used the copying tool I could use the larger size (48x48 pixels).

Download IconsExtract 1.42 in Softonic

Desktop Icon Toy is a desktop icon enhancement tool, which allows you to make many funny things for your windows desktop icons. It can animate and dance icons, layout icons, hide icon texts, add hover effects for desktop icons, automatically show hide desktop icons, save and restore desktop icon layout.

Download Desktop Icon Toy 3.0 in Softonic

If you've decorated your entire house with Christmas stuff, why not doing the same with your computer?

Start by customizing system icons with this great collection of Christmas-themed icons for your PC. The Merry Christmas PNG Pack includes fifty icons featuring the most typical elements in this holiday season: Santa hats, snowmen, gifts, Christmas trees, colored balls, stars and so on. However, I missed having some more variety – for example, there are a bunch of Santa hats, but only one gingerbread cookie and one snowball.

All of them are saved in PNG format, which allows transparency effects. Also, their generous size (256x256 in most of them) enables you to enjoy them in full size without losing any quality.

Get your PC in the holiday spirit with this excellent pack of icons.

Download Merry Christmas PNG Pack in Softonic

Do you get bred with standard Windows icons? They are not exactly inspiring and some are downright boring.

Breathe new life into Windows folders by changing the standard Windows icon with one that you'd prefer or think would make a more appropriate picture for the folder. All you need to do is simply selecting the folder whose icon you want to change, click the right button and select the "Change Icon Folder" link in the menu. There are hundreds of variations to choose from and if they're not enough, you can always create your own with your own pictures and designs. You can search for icons in all kinds of files (EXE, DLL, LIB, etc.) from the program itself and export the one you like most to ICO format.

An excellent way to freshen-up Windows and give folders a personal touch.

Download Change Folder Icons 8.5 in Softonic

IconUtils is a collection of individual tools by Aha-Soft that let you perform a series of modifications to icons and that comes to you as one convenient file, making it easy to install and use. This package includes IconLover 4.10, AhaView 3.13, Any to Icon 3.30 and Icon to Any 3.0.

Features:

• Create and edit icons in either standard or custom sizes, in color depths up to 32-bit True Color
• Create and edit smooth semi-transparent icons for Windows XP
• Create and edit static and animated cursors
• Paint images with gradient and chess fill
• Modify images with drop shadow, smooth, grayscale, rotate, roll and mirror effects
• Make icons and cursors from various graphic formats, including ICO, BMP, JPEG, ANI, CUR, GIF, PNG, TIFF, PCX, WMF, WBMP, XPM, XBM and Adobe Photoshop PSD
• Convert Mac icons to Windows format
• Save icon images as ICO, BMP, JPEG, CUR, PNG, WBMP, XBM, XPM, PSD (Adobe Photoshop) and RC (Resource Compiler) files
• Convert multiple files at once
• Create and manage icon and cursor libraries for better and more efficient storage
• Extract icons and cursors from Windows executables, libraries and animated cursor files
• Modify icons inside executables
• Search in folders for icons and cursors
• Customize desktop and folder icons
• View images fullscreen
• Browse folders in thumbnail mode
• Convert images to BMP, JPEG and PNG formats

Download IconUtils 4.2 in Softonic

Windows Vista has some really nice eyecandy that I wouldn't mind having on my computer as well - that is, if that didn't imply changing my operating system. As long as there are apps like Vista Drive Icons, I can have some of that Vista graphic treats while keeping Windows XP.

In this case, Vista Drive Icons replaces XP drive standard icons with Vista-themed icons, including a nice blue progress bar, which enables you to see how much space you're using - and how much you have left - at a glance. It's really useful to get an idea of space management without having to open the Properties dialog.

Pity this tool doesn't work with networked drives. It will only display the bar for your local hard drives.

Add a Vista-like progress bar to your hard drive icon and see how space is being used.

Download Vista Drive Icons 1.3 in Softonic