How do I stop my icons changing size?
QI usually connect my laptop to a large external monitor. I use this as my main screen, but the Windows 10 desktop extends to the laptop’s screen too. This generally works well, but sometimes when I disconnect the laptop from the monitor while it’s running, the screen wobbles a bit and the icons on my taskbar go very small. Restarting the laptop fixes it, but this is a pain. The same problem also happens in reverse, so connecting my running laptop to the external monitor results in taskbar icons that are too large. Again, restarting the laptop fixes it. It doesn’t happen every time, but it is annoying. Is there a fix?
AWindows has never been great at handling sudden screen changes, and little quirks like this have been annoying people pretty much forever. Restarting your laptop usually allows the operating system to pull itself together, as you’ve noticed.
Until Microsoft gets around to creating a truly seamless experience for switching monitors, one workaround is to restart the explorer.exe process that drives the Windows desktop. This forces Windows to reassess the amount of available screen space and rejig its desktop, just as it does when you restart your laptop.
You can automate this process by creating a little batch-file script in Notepad, the text-editing app that’s included with Windows 10 (see screenshot above). Launch it, then type these two lines, pressing Enter after each: taskkill /f /im explorer.exe start explorer.exe
Alternatively, you can copy these commands from the Pastebin page we created at www.snipca.com/39353, then paste them into your Notepad window. Now click File followed by ‘Save As’ (see screenshot above right), and name this script ‘Restart Desktop.bat’ (or anything else, as long as it ends in ‘.bat’, which is short for ‘batch file’). We’d suggest saving it to the Windows desktop so it’s within easy reach.
Now if you disconnect or reattach your laptop to your external monitor and the icons change size, double-click the Restart Desktop.bat file to make Windows close then restart explorer.exe, saving you the hassle of rebooting your computer.