Rebuild Icon Cache in Windows 11

The icons that display for files in Windows are saved in an icon cache so they can be displayed quickly instead of having to manually scan and slowly load them each time.

The icon cache can sometimes become corrupted causing the icons of files to display incorrectly or distorted. When this happens, the icon cache needs to be deleted to reset and automatically recreate it.

Rebuilding the icon cache will not help with the following icon issues:

• The icon of a shortcut not displaying properly due to the target source of the shortcut was moved or deleted. You may need to recreate a new shortcut directly from the source (ex: program’s exe) file to replace it instead.
• All icons for a specific file extension display the wrong icon. This may be due to setting the wrong association for what app to open the file type instead. If so, restoring the default association of the file extension will fix this issue.
• Thumbnails of pictures, videos, and documents.

This tutorial will show you how to rebuild the icon cache to clear and reset it for your account in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

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