Fix Desktop Icons Missing or Disappeared in Windows

If your Windows 10 desktop icons are missing, there may be an issue with either your icon settings or your core Windows system. Issues like these often don’t have an apparent reason and that makes it difficult to troubleshoot them.

However, for the desktop icons missing issue, there are a few standard fixes you can try and hopefully resolve the issue on your computer.

Also, if you prefer to watch a video,check out our YouTube tutorialbelow that goes through a couple of the options. However, if none of those work, make sure to read the rest of the article as we have more steps and solutions listed here.

Ensure The Desktop Icons Aren’t Disabled

The first and the most basic thing you’ll want to do before you perform any other methods is to check if the option that displays your desktop icons is enabled. If you or someone else turned off the option for some reason, that’s why your Windows 10 desktop icons have gone missing. You can bring them all back in a couple of clicks, though.

Re-Configure Your Desktop Icons’ Settings

You also want to check the settings for your desktop icons and ensure the ones you want are selected and enabled. If you’ve customized your icon settings, it might have caused your icons to disappear from your desktop.

You can head into the Settings and configure the options there to fix the issue.

Relaunch The Windows Explorer

Your desktop icons are part of the explorer.exe process that runs on your computer. If there’s an issue with the process, it can cause issues like Windows 10 desktop icons missing or disappearing on your Windows PC.

The good thing is that you can easily fix the issue by relaunching the process on your machine.

Toggle The Tablet Mode In Windows Settings

Tablet mode changes how the icons and other elements appear on your system, and it’s worth toggling it to see if it helps fix the Windows 10 desktop icons missing issue on your computer.

Scan For & Fix Corrupt Files On Your System

Corrupt files are often the reason why some functions don’t work on your computer. Your files can get corrupted due to various reasons but you can actually fix them pretty easily with a built-in tool.

Microsoft has included a command in the Windows operating system to let you search for and fix corrupt files on your computer.

Toggle The Start Menu Full-Screen Option

Since there’s no apparent reason why your Windows 10 desktop icons are missing, you can try enabling and disabling the options related to your user interface and it can hopefully fix the issue for you.

One of the things you can do is toggle the full-screen option for your Windows Start Menu.

Rebuild The Icon Cache For Your Computer

Your computer uses the icon cache file to display icons on your desktop. If there’s an issue with this file, it can cause your desktop icons to disappear. Fortunately, you can rebuild this cache file by following a few steps on your computer.

Roll Back To a Previous Restore Point

If the issue has arisen after installing software or making changes to your computer configuration, you can resolve it by rolling your machine back to asystem restore point. It’ll get your configurations back to what they were when the icons displayed perfectly fine on your desktop.

Reset Your Computer

Lastly, if nothing works, you can try resetting your PC to the factory settings and see if it resolves the issue for you. It most likely should fix it as that’s what it’s been built for.

Your Windows 10 desktop icons can go missing for any reason but you can always try out some of the standard fixes to see if they help bring your icons back to your desktop.

If the above guide helped you fix the desktop icons disappeared issue on your PC, please let us know what method worked for you in the comments below, so others can benefit from it.

Mahesh has been obsessed with technology since he got his first gadget a decade or so ago. Over the last few years, he’s written a number of tech articles on various online publications including but not limited to MakeTechEasier and Android AppStorm.Read Mahesh’s Full Bio

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