How To Change Folder Picture In Windows 10

A large percentage of PC users know that it’s possible to change the default folder icon in Windows. For instance, you can change the default folder icon in Windows 10 look like Windows 7 icon or use third-party utilities to change folder color.

What people don’t know is that we can also change or set a folder picture. For those who have no idea, folder picture and folder icon are different.

Folder picture is the picture you see on a folder when it’s being viewed in the thumbnail view (tiles, medium icons, large icons and extra-large icons view).

Windows Explorer or File Explorer automatically creates a folder picture for the thumbnail view using up to the first four picture files in the folder. If there are no files or if there are files that cannot be used as folder picture, File Explorer displays the default folder picture.

At times, you might want to set your own picture file as folder picture for a folder in Windows 10 for easy recognition. In this guide, we will learn the two ways out there to change folder picture in Windows 10.

Method 1 of 2

Change folder picture in Windows 10

This is probably the easiest way out there, but most people who have been using Windows for decades are not aware of it.

Step 1: Open up the folder for which you want to set a folder picture. If you cannot see the file extension, click View and then select File name extensions check box.

Step 2: Rename one of the picture files in the folder to Folder.gif to set the image file as folder picture for that folder. Simple as that!

While attempting to rename an image file, you will get a warning dialog. Click Yes button rename the image file to GIF. If the image file is not opening after renaming it to GIF, please rename its extension back to the original extension.

Note that you don’t need to create a new GIF image file. Simply rename any JPEG or PNG image to Folder.GIF to set it as folder picture.

Please note that folder picture will not display animations in GIF images even if you set an animated GIF image as folder picture.

Method 2 of 2

Another way to change folder picture in Windows 10

NOTE: If a folder has a Folder.gif file, the custom folder picture that you set using this method overrides it.

Step 1: Right-click on the folder for which you want to change or set folder picture and then click Properties.

Step 2: Switch to the Customize tab. In the Folder pictures section, click Choose file, browse to the picture file that you want to set as the folder picture for the selected folder, and then click the Open button.

Finally, click the Apply button to set the picture as folder picture. To restore the original folder picture, click the Restore Default button.

Also learn how to change folder background color in Windows 10.

Hope you find this guide useful!