Windows XP Hacks

Customize Folder Icons and Balloon Text

Make it easier to recognize specific folders and remember their contents, by giving them their own pictures and identifying text.

All folders are not created equal; some are more important than others. Folders I use for writing books and articles, or for storing digital music, for example, are more vital to me than folders that hold tax records from eight years ago.

So I like to give myself visual clues when browsing my computer about what each folder holds and how important it is to me. I have so many folders on my hard disk that I can’t always immediately recall the purposes of some of them, so for some I also create balloon text that describes the purpose of the folder when I hover my mouse over the folder.

To force a folder to display a specific icon and to have it display balloon text when you hover your mouse over it, create a Desktop.ini file in that folder. That file contains instructions on which icon to use and balloon text to display.

Tip

If you don’t want to display customized balloon text, you can display an icon for any folder without having to create a Desktop.ini file yourself. Right-click on the folder you want to customize, choose Properties → Customize → “Change icon” and browse to the icon you want to use. When you do that, you’ll automatically create a Desktop.ini file that will display the proper icon.

Before creating the file, choose the icon you want to use for the folder. Icons end in an .ico extension. You can also ...