How To Lock Your Desktop Icons Quickly?

Are your desktop icons moving around your home screen and don’t stay at one place? Windows users have reported facing this problem especially after rebooting their computer. So, let’s talk about the causes and their solutions

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Why are My Desktop Icons moving?

Many users have mentioned arranging their icons, refreshing it, and finding them stayed put. But after they restart or put the computer to sleep, they find it scrambled again! We have listed the possibilities below:

Auto-arrange enabled

“Auto-arrange” (found on your desktop home screen) arranges your desktop icons for you! It does the work for you by adding, removing, and arranging your most/least used recent apps and files on your desktop home screen. This can cause your icons to move around or go missing from the desktop home screen.

Gaming re-adjust

When you’re launching games or large applications on desktop, your screen re-adjusts for a moment. It can go from landscape to portrait mode and back to landscape, or simply change resolutions. This automatically changes the placement of the desktop icons.

Potential viruses

Although a virus/bug does not directly cause your desktop icons to move places, it could be related to the performance issues caused by the virus.

How to lock your desktop icons?

Now that we have looked into the reasons why, let’s find out how to solve them.

Disable Auto-Arrange

Open your home screen and right click to open “View”.
Click on “Auto-arrange” and “Align icon to grid” to unselect, or disable.

Now you can rearrange your desktop icons the way you want and find them in place next time!

Here’s a tip, you can arrange them better by:

Change Your Icon Size

If you’re not happy with the icon size, you can change it to the size you prefer! But this method should also help you keep the desktop organized. Think of it as the virtual equivalent of your parents smacking the remote, and magically making it work!

Change your current size (i.e., “Medium icons” to “Large icons” or “Small icons”)

Disable themes permission

Themes also have the authority to affect the overall performance of your desktop icons. Here’s how to stop them from making changes:

Go to “Settings” > Click on “Personalization” > “Themes”. Click on “Related Settings” > “Desktop icon Settings“.
Click on “Allow themes to change desktop icons” to disable.

Install anti-virus

Here’s how to check for viruses and install anti-virus to help lock your desktop icons:

Scan for virus

Go to “Settings” > “Update & Security“. Click on “Windows Security” > “Open Windows Security“.
Click on “Virus & threat protection” > “Scan options”.
You can try the scan option that works best for you.

Download Anti-Virus

Try the built-in Windows Defender on your desktop.

Go to “Windows Security” > “Virus & Threat Protection“. Go to “Windows Security” > “Virus & Threat Protection“.
If the shield icon is accompanied by a red cross mark, chances are that your Threat protection / Windows Defender is turned off.
Click “Turn on” for all the suggestions to enable the Anti-virus.

Or, you can do it manually.

Click on “Virus & threat protection” > “Manage Settings“.

Enable them all.

Check for Windows update

Outdated software can be full of bugs and errors. So, the last resort would be to Update Windows as it often releases updates to fix bugs. Here’s how to check if your Windows is up-to-date.