The next step in customizing our Windows 10 computer is the file explorer. This is surprisingly easy to do, contrary to popular belief. There are numerous programs to do this, including QTabBar, various iPacks and more. But in this tutorial we will use 7tsp to set up an icon theme, and OldNewExplorer to simplify and round off the explorer design.
Finding an Icon Theme
There are many sites which dedicate themselves to Windows theming, but as always I prefer to use deviantart for finding themes. Of course, it is easy to compile your own icon theme but this is a beginners tutorial. For this guide let's install Sweet Paranoia by niivu.
Download the file, unzip it with your unzipping progra, and move the unzipped file to the folder you created last time to store your themes. This might be there for a while so it's good to keep it out of the way. Head into the folder, and locate the "7tsp" folder.
Before we continue, make sure you have file types enabled as viewable in Explorer. To do this, you can use this blog post for more help and information. Now that you can see them, we'll need to remove the suffix "remove" so that the file reads "7tsp candy.7z". This enables it to be seen and used by the 7tsp software.
We, of course, now need to download the icon changer. You can get it from here. Again, head into the file and rename the file extension from "ee" to "exe" per the instructions. The reason way most scripts do this is to ensure that Firefox and Chrome doesn't label it as malware. But I can assure you it is compeltely safe. Now, launch it and wait for it to load.
Now we need to select "Add a custom pack" and then navigate to our candy icon folder we downloaded previously, where we should be able to select it. Once it's selected, click on "Start Patching", accept any dialogues that come up, and sit back for a minute while 7tsp runs its program.
Make sure not to do this if your currently completing a task, since it shuts down the taskbar and disables the shell while it's patching for security. However, once this program has run you should be able to restart and on booting back up, your icons will be patched! Contact me if they're not, I'm always happy to help. (See links at bottom).
Now, lets sort out OldNewExplorer. You can download it from here. This program is super good for cleaning up the explorer themes and everyone themer I know uses it.
So once it's downloaded, run it and it should open straight away, no install process needed. See the picture below for my current configuration on OldNewExplorer. Once you enale the functions, next time you open explorer it should have saved and been enabled.
So that's it! Thanks for reading and hopefully your File Explorer looks cleaner now. If you have any issues please feel free to contact me at Discord or Reddit. My Discord username is BlueJive#5860 and my reddit one is u/Blu3Jive01