Desktop Icons Spacing in Windows Vista

Control or change the space between desktop icons

As any green grocer will tell you, the most efficient way to stack oranges is the face-centered cubic arrangement, wherein each piece of fruit is placed in the cavity formed by three adjacent oranges in the lower plane. Sadly, Windows Vista doesn't have this option, but if you're content with Windows rectilinear arrangement, you can fine-tune row and column spacing on the desktop.

Also in the aforementioned View menu is the Align to Grid option. Leave it on, and your icons will always appear lined up in rows and columns; turn it off to have complete flexibility when dragging your icons around the desktop.

To change the spacing, right-click an empty area of the desktop, select Personalize, and then click Window Color and Appearance. Click the Open classic appearance properties for more color options link, and then click Advanced. (Or, if you're not using Vista's Aero interface, just click Advanced here.) From the Item drop-down menu, choose Icon Spacing (Horizontal) and adjust the spacing by changing the Size value to indicate the number of pixels between the edges of adjacent icons.

A good value is approximately 1.3 to 1.5 times the width of an icon. To find the size of your desktop icons, right-click an empty area of the desktop and select View. If Medium Icons (the default) is checked, your icons are 44×44. For Classic Icons, they’re the standard 32×32; for Large Icons, they’re 86×86.

So, if you're using classic icons, specify 40 in the Advanced Appearance window to pack them pretty closely, or 50 to spread them apart. Next, change the Icon Spacing (Vertical) value; use the same number for both the horizontal and vertical measurements, and the result will look pretty good.