How do I change the color of an icon label? (Pro 5.1)

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Hi. How do I change the color of an icon label?

I’ve tried going to >Display Properties >Appearance >Advanced >Item but can not find ‘icon label’.

Help!

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If you mean the solid colored background behind the text, that’s controlled by the Desktop color. If it’s the drop-shadows behind icon text that debuted in XP, I don’t know of an easy way to do it (although I suspect it lies somewhere in the registry).

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the text? it’s based on the background color – a light bg color and the text is dark, dark bg, it’s light/white.

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Thank you both for posting a reply.

MJ, so does this mean that I can not set the color of the text manually?

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yes, that’s basically what it means. if you aren’t choosy about the background color (if you use an image, the color isn’t seen anyway) you can experiment with bg colors to get the text colors to what you want. Assuming you don’t want to blend them with the background in an attempt to hide the labels.

if you do want to hide the labels, why not just hide the icons and put the desktop as a menu on the task bar?

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Hi MJ. Thank you for the advise. I think it sucks that I can’t directly control the color of the Icon Text Label. I don’t want to hide the text label but I do want to control it’s color. Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait for an MS update.

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Henry, just make sure you don’t hold your breath waiting for the boys and girls in Redmond to get around to making this available….if you hold your breath, you might turn several shades of purple and blue.

Try checking with Google – there are some little applications out there that can manipulate icon text and backgrounds.

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Henry, how ’bout making the icons transparent? As I recall, I couldn’t do it because I love “Active Desktop” so I keep it turned on instead.

The transparency trick may require you to download Microsoft PowerToys for XP, but they’re worth having anyway.

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Thanks Mark and Big Al!

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