How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10

Quick Access is a new folder on File Explorer Windows 10. That's where Explorer opens by default instead of opening on This PC. Quick Access displays recent files and folders. You can also pin locations of other items inside Quick Access.

However, in Windows 10, Microsoft does not allow users to customize the Quick Access icon using the GUI, but if you want, you can still tweak through the Registry.

By default Windows 10 uses a blue star icon for the Quick Access folder.

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 1

However, if you don't want to use this icon, you can change it with any icon you want. To do this, please refer to the following article of Network Administrator.

Change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer on Windows 10

Follow the steps below to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer on Windows 10:

1. Open Registry Editor by pressing Windows + R key combination to open the Run command window, then enter regedit there and press Enter . If the UAC window appears, click Yes to continue.

2. On the Windows Registry window you navigate to the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWAREClassesCLSID

3. Here, create a new subkey named {679f85cb-0220-4080-b29b-5540cc05aab6} .

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 2

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 3

4. At the subkey {679f85cb-0220-4080-b29b-5540cc05aab6}, create a new subkey named DefaultIcon .

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 4

5. At DefaultIcon, set the right (blank) default value string to the full path to the icon file you want to set. For example, in the example below, Network Administrator uses the old Quick Access icon.

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 5

So enter the specific path on the Registry window is C: Winaeroold_qa_icon.ico .

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 6

6. Once completed, restart Explorer shell or log out and log back in the user account, or refresh the cache icon.

Before performing the process:

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 7

After performing the process:

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 8

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 9

Instead of entering the full path you can set the value string below:

imageres.dll, -1024

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 10

The icon will then be set to the old Favorites icon.

How to change the Quick Access icon on File Explorer Windows 10 Picture 11

Refer to some of the following articles:

1. Why is it disabled but Cortana still runs in the background?

1. Instructions to disable Cortana on Windows 10 Anniversary Update

1. How to use Cortana to turn off or restart Windows 10?

Good luck!