How to Customize Folder Colors in Windows 10

Matthew November 15, 2018

Would you like to be able to assign different colors to your folders on your Windows 10 desktop so that you can organize directories by color? Unfortunately Windows 10 doesn’t have a built-in feature to allow that, but there are some third-party software packages that you can use to gain this functionality. One excellent option is called Colorizer, and it allows you to select new folder colors from the context menu. As of this writing, Colorizer is on version 2.1.2.

How to Customize Folder Colors in Windows 10

Installing Colorizer is quick and painless. Open the Colorizer page on Microsoft to add it to Windows 10. Click the Download button to save the software’s setup wizard. Then click FolderColorizer2.exe to install Colorizer. When you first use Colorizer, it will prompt you to update to the newest version. There is a free trial but after you colorize a few folders you will have to buy a license, unfortunately.

To get started, right-click the Windows 10 desktop and select New > Folder to add a new folder to it. Next, you should right-click the folder on the desktop to open its context menu. The context menu will now include a Colorize option, as showed in the photo below. Select that option to expand its submenu.

colorizer

The submenu above includes a few colors from which you can choose. Choose a color from there to add it the folder as below. Press the Restore original color option on the context menu to revert the folder back to the default color.

You can add new colors to almost any folder in File Explorer much the same. Note that there are a few folders you can’t apply colors to. For example, you can’t add new colors to compressed Zip folders in File Explorer.

Select Colors on the submenu to open the window below. That includes a circular palette from which you can select custom colors by dragging the cursor over it. You can also drag the color bar below to choose further color varieties. To add the new color to the context menu, press + Add Color to Library button.

Colorizer is a great package to customize folder colors in Windows 7 or higher. You can also customize the folder colors with alternative programs such as FolderMarker and Folderico. For other ways that you can customize Windows 10’s desktop icons, check out this TechJunkie tutorial.