How to Lock Desktop Icons in Place on Windows 11
- Marshall Gunnell
@bacon_gritz
- November 5, 2021, 5:00pm EDT
Microsoft
Windows sometimes likes to rearrange your desktop icons when you restart Windows or download a new application and add the desktop icon. The cause of this is a built-in feature thats enabled by default. Heres how to turn it off.
Lock Desktop Icons in Place
First, right-click anywhere on your desktop. A context menu will appear. Hover your cursor over the View option at the top of the menu.
A sub-menu will appear, displaying several different icon view options. On this menu is an option called Auto Arrange Icons. As the name implies, this feature allows Windows to automatically arrange your icons. To prevent this from happening, uncheck the Auto Arrange Icons option.
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You can also check Align Icons to Grid if you want each row and column of icons to be aligned.
Other Possible Causes to Note
This should prevent Windows from randomly rearranging your desktop icons for the most part. However, there are some other cases in which your desktop icons may be rearranged even if you disabled the Auto Arrange Icons setting. For example, if you change your screen resolution, your icons may sometimes get scattered.
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Unfortunately, theres no built-in way to prevent that from happening except for not changing the screen resolution. Its better to stick with your native resolution anyway. If Windows is sporadically changing the resolution without you taking any action, it could be because of an outdated driver. In this case, you may want to update your driver to see if that fixes the issue.
There are, of course, many third-party applications that claim to handle the task of locking your desktop icons in placemany of these apps being freeware, which often contain bloatware or other unwanted viruses. Be sure to thoroughly vet the developers of these apps before downloading anything.
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Marshall Gunnell
Marshall Gunnell is a writer with experience in the data storage industry. He worked at Synology, and most recently as CMO and technical staff writer at StorageReview. He's currently an API/Software Technical Writer based in Tokyo, Japan, runs VGKAMI andITEnterpriser, and spends what little free time he has learning Japanese. Read Full Bio »