14 DAY TRIAL // As many long-time Windows 10 users know, the lack of design consistency when it comes to icons in this operating system isn’t a new problem.
And despite the arrival of a new set of icons earlier this month, the consistency issue is yet to be resolved, leaving us with designs from different decades, all under one roof.
An analysis of the Windows 10 icons that are currently being used by Microsoft (after the release of the modern pack one week ago) has received thousands of votes on social media, as it shows just how much of a problem the lack of consistency is in the operating system.
A single screenshot groups icons borrowed from Windows 7, technically unchanged from2009, as well old Win32 program icons updated to fit Windows 10, Metro icons released as part of the original Windows 10 version, and the new design based on the Fluent Design language.
Other icon designs can also be spotted here and there, including the one for the Xbox Game Bar, which honestly doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t fit any of the categories mentioned above.
So why this struggle even after so many icon updates?
If I were to guess, it’s probably all because of Microsoft’s gradual rollout of new icons to devices across the world.
Microsoft seems to be a big fan of product launches in stages – in the case of Windows 10 feature updates, for example, not everyone receives the new update at once; instead, Microsoft ships it to a limited set of devices, tests its reliability, and only when it’s sure everything’s running correctly the rollout is expanded to more computers.
The same for icons, which are gradually pushed to devices running Windows 10, so not everyone is getting them at once.
But this is only part of the problem. New set of icons don’t necessarily replace all older icons, and this is why we end up having multiple designs from different Windows versions under one roof. Technically, Windows 10 is a mix of both old and new, Win32 programs and modern apps, so Microsoft sticks with the original icon designs possibly to retain the familiar approach for Windows users.
The Control Panel icon, for example, has remained unchanged throughout the years, but on the other hand, rolling out an updated version could be the end of the world for those who don’t like changes. So retaining the same design is pretty much the only way to go, even if this means losing consistency across the OS.
Microsoft doesn’t just redesigns all icons at once, but releases updated designs for only part of them, and this is how we end up with this unusual mix.
At the end of the day, it could also be something that Microsoft uses to avoid taking users by surprise, but it goes without saying that not everyone is a big fan of having such a cocktail of icon designs on their desktops.
Windows 10 was supposed to be a modern operating system from one end to another, and using ancient icons certainly doesn’t align with this concept. Whether or not Microsoft will find a way to resolve this in the long term is something that remains to be seen, but for the time being, you’d better not start looking in the icon libraries that come with Windows 10.
While I don’t want to provide any spoilers, two libraries that perfectly highlight the consistency issue are moreicons.dll and pifmgr.dll, both of which are still available in Windows 10 these days.