App Icons - They are driving me crazy

November 26, 2020 12:01 PM

This is such a silly thing, but I can't be the only one with this problem. I have trouble distinguishing app icons from one another. My brain does not like pictures. My brain likes words. And yet the world is becoming more and more image-oriented.

It's one thing not to be able to find apps on my phone, but I'm trying to work at a fast pace these days. I have about 8 apps running (I'm a dev), and in the Windows taskbar - Skype, IE, Outlook, Word, Notepad, SQL dev, Java - they are almost ALL BLUE. Or contain too much blue.


Possible solutions? Please?

posted by kitcat to Technology (15 answers total)

Make custom icons that feature 1-3 letters of the name in large block letters? Use different character and background color pairs for each and I bet you'll be able easily and quickly distinguish them.
posted by SaltySalticid at 12:13 PM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

High contrast options? I'm not sure. I'm totally blind so the problem is a little alien to me, but I hope that something which makes things easier to distinguish in general might be helpful.

Alternatively, use a screen reading program which doesn't care what icons look like. :)
posted by Alensin at 12:20 PM on November 26, 2020

Best answer: Alphabetize the icons?
posted by Glomar response at 12:20 PM on November 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If you pin your most used apps to the Windows taskbar, you can quickly jump to those apps using the Windows key + [number] keyboard shortcut. So without even looking at the icon, if you pinned Outlook to the first position and Skype to the second, you can press Win+1 to check your mail and then Win+2 to respond to a chat message, then Win+1 to jump back. Also when you pin icons, they never move so you vaguely remember the position of the app icons without even having to look at the icon.
posted by meowzilla at 12:40 PM on November 26, 2020 [8 favorites]

You can also use Windows Task View, which shows all your open apps in tiled form on one screen, and clicking on an app switches to that app. You do need to have all your apps (not the icons, but the actual apps) be semi-recognizable, otherwise you just get a bunch of boxes that look the same: like "blue window" is Skype, "white window" is Outlook, "gray window" is Java, etc.

I've mapped a similar function to a mouse button on Mac OS and this is pretty much how I switch apps without using the Dock/Start Menu/taskbar since on big monitors it's so far away. It really helps to have a lot of buttons on your mouse.
posted by meowzilla at 12:51 PM on November 26, 2020

Response by poster: meowzilla - that's interesting. Could you provide a link to such a mouse? I'm sure the same can be done with Windows.
posted by kitcat at 12:58 PM on November 26, 2020

Best answer: Gaming MMO mice like the Logitech G604, Corsair Scimitar, or the Razer Naga have a ton of assignable buttons, if you can get past both their "gamer" looks and often terrible customization software.
posted by meowzilla at 1:42 PM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

You could probably do it in your mouse control panel with a triple- or quadruple-click to activate that windows task view.
It's a feature that's built in with macs.. launchpad, IIRC. I have a macbook (no mouse) so for me it's a three-finger swipe.
You might also check the taskbar view options(?).. on mac the [taskbar equivalent] icons can be set to magnify on mouseover, making them easy to read. Maybe under accessibility options?
posted by sexyrobot at 1:49 PM on November 26, 2020

Basically any mouse with more than two buttons and a scroll wheel will have buttons that you can assign to other functions like task switching, but if the gamer aesthetic isn't for you, the Logitech MX line of mice are (IMHO) the best for this as most will have around 3-4 extra fully-programmable buttons. (And, of course, there are plenty of other mice with extra programmable buttons, but I prefer Logitech's build quality and software to most other options.)

As far as I'm aware, there aren't any mouse gestures built-in to Windows for opening the Task View, though you should be able to use [Win]+[Tab] on the keyboard to open it. If you have a touchpad that supports multitouch, you should be able to assign a gesture that opens Task View there as well.
posted by Aleyn at 3:14 PM on November 26, 2020

Best answer: Also, if you do want to go down the rabbit hole of actually changing the icons in the taskbar, here's a guide that outlines that process: https://www.techlatest.in/customize-icons-in-windows-10/
posted by Aleyn at 3:26 PM on November 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

I hide icons on my desktop, and type the start button and type the name of the app I want to run when I use windows. When I use Mac, I type command space and use Spotlight to find and run the app I want to run.
posted by oceanjesse at 5:36 PM on November 26, 2020

I feel you; blue is my favorite color, but Windows has waaaaay too many blue icons.

Alt-Tab will move you between open windows, with a graphic representation of the current state of each open app window (that is, if you have multiple Word documents open, you'll see a picture of each open document). If the app isn't open, hit the Windows key and start typing the name, it will find the app and let you start it. If you're in a browser, Ctrl-Tab will move you between Windows.

If you're a developer, you should be looking to reduce your dependency on a mouse; moving your hand away from the keyboard reduces your productivity.
posted by lhauser at 8:25 PM on November 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

I sympathise. I find myself opening SQL Server when I want IIS, and vice versa, because they're both strongly top-left-bottom-right diagonal icons. The option to assign a <= 8-character nickname to an application, to appear beneath the icon (phone-app style) in the taskbar, would be really helpful.

Instead of that, here's what's on offer: if you switch "Combine taskbar buttons" on Taskbar Settings (context menu on the taskbar) to "Never", then icons for open windows will have text alongside them. However:
- it's usually text identifying what's open in the application, not the application itself, even if you only have one instance/window open;
- if you have multiple screens, it only seems to apply on the primary;
- and because it's not the application name but its contents, any pinned applications you haven't yet opened remain anonymous.
And it's not exactly space-efficient. I see why it's off by default.

I've ended up just pinning every application I use regularly, so that I can rely on spatial memory as well as shape recognition. It helps a bit.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:10 AM on November 27, 2020

>Alt-Tab will move you between open windows

And Alt-Shift-Tab moves you between open windows in the opposite sequence. For example with 3 open windows:

Alt-Tab moves: win1 - win2 - win3 - win1...
Alt-Shift-Tab moves win1 - win3 - win2 - win1...
posted by Homer42 at 5:44 AM on November 27, 2020

Response by poster: This is funny, but I might implement alphabetize, WIN key + num AND get a mouse with multiple buttons.

Not sure if this is the expected behavior, but Alt-Tab moves between windows in the Task View only, which is worse for me. Even more blue!

Pretty much anything in blue my brain just discards for some reason. So I really have to go non-visual on this as a workaround. Very clever solutions here, thank you!
posted by kitcat at 9:22 AM on November 27, 2020