Windows 11 Desktop icons rearrange and re-sort themselves

Anonymous
2023-07-21T01:09:08+00:00

Lately, my Windows desktop icons have periodically and at random rearranged and re-sorted themselves.

It looks like at arbitrary times, This PC and the Recycle Bin, which are traditionally at the top left hand corner of the desktop now shift downwards. The icons re-sort themselves into alphabetical name order. It usually happens after a boot or reboot.

I also have icons spread out randomly over a two-screen desktop. At an arbitrary moment, again associated with a reboot, all icons suddenly snap to the left hand side of the left-hand screen.

There are many posts on the web about the "Autoarrange Icons" and "Align Icons" settings. Changing those settings do not resolve this problem.

This may have something with the ""Sort By" setting. If that is it, the setting does not stay that way for long.

I don't know if this is a new bug that has appeared in a recent build. I use Windows 11 Home, and the current Version is 22H2, and the Build is 22621.1992.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Settings

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-06-03T10:48:31+00:00

    My IT Dept installed a program called "DesktopOK" that saves the position of all your icons and you can restore them. It does work although I didn't really want to install a program just to fix Microsoft's error. I haven't had to use it much recently but sometimes after shutting down completely it will still power on and I suddenly have the problem again. I did right click on the desktop and hit refresh one time when it was scattering my icons (I put them back with DesktopOK but it would still scatter them again as soon as I moved any icon). But clicking refresh seemed to solve it, at least on one or two occasions. But that won't help if you don't know they are going to scatter (which I never do). So a combination of having DesktopOK to put them back and then right click refreshing seems to have worked for me.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-06-02T00:50:24+00:00

    Just booted up, saw my icons are scattered from how I set them up, checked the above Settings/Personalization/Themes/Desktop icon settings and the box is unchecked.

    This is not the solution!

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-06-01T17:56:16+00:00

    Here is the simple answer you deserved rather than all the ridiculous MS support gymnastics:

    Uncheck Allow themes to change desktop icons at the following location:

    Settings (app)->Personalization->Themes->Desktop icon settings

    THE ANSWER!!!

    THANK YOU MOST KINDLY!!

    No, this is unchecked and I still have the problem.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-06-01T16:59:02+00:00

    Here is the simple answer you deserved rather than all the ridiculous MS support gymnastics:

    Uncheck Allow themes to change desktop icons at the following location:

    Settings (app)->Personalization->Themes->Desktop icon settings

    THE ANSWER!!!

    THANK YOU MOST KINDLY!!

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-21T19:30:28+00:00

    Ooh, I'm going to try this. That would make sense, even though I've never changed my theme.

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