Why do my desktop icons keep moving?

If the icons on your Windows 11 or Windows 10,8,7 desktop keep moving, the solution to keep the icons from rearranging themselves is to use a software tool to remember the positions of the icons, and then restore the icons, when needed. Unfortunately, Windows itself does not offer a tool for that, but thankfully there are third party tools available that can do the job. One of such tools is our own Icon Shepherd:

Download and install Icon Shepherd

Icon Shepherd works with Windows 11, 10, 8, and 7 and supports multiple monitors. It's free for use on one personal computer at you home. (No credit card required to download or install Icon Shepherd.) If you want to use it on a business computer, or on more than one computer at home, you can purchase an appropriate license, at a later time.

Use Icon Shepherd to store the desktop icons layout

It's very easy to use Icon Shepherd to keep the desktop icons under control. If you have arranged the desktop icons where you want them be, launch Icon Shepherd using its desktop or taskbar icon and choose Remember icons now - Save As from the menu, and enter some name for the layout. Any name, such as My Icons, would do. This will remember the position of each desktop icon and store all such information for later.

Use Icon Shepherd to restore the desktop icons from the stored layout

Whenever Windows messes up the icons on your desktop, open Icon Shepherd again and choose Restore icons command, and that would move the icons back to their places as they were when you stored them. Pretty easy, huh?

Of course, you can use the Restore icons command again, later on, when your desktop icons become disorganized again. Also, if at some point you decide that some icons better be in different positions, then go ahead and rearrange them as needed. When done, use the Remember icons now - Save As command of Icon Shepherd again (using the same or a different name) to store the updated layout of the desktop icons for use later on.

Icon Shepherd offers you more ways to be in control of the desktop icons:

• You can make Icon Shepherd remember more than one icon layout, each with its own name, and restore a specific layout, when needed. For example, you may want the icons to be arranged differently depending on which monitors you connect to your computer, or if you change the desktop resolution.

• If you store several icon layouts, you can control them using the Manage layouts command of Icon Shepherd: it offers you commands to rename the layouts, change their order, or delete the unused ones. You can also export the icon layouts into a file, to keep them in your backup, to use at a later point, when needed.

• If your desktop icons become messed up every time when you log in to Windows, you can tell Icon Shepherd to automatically restore a specific icon layout every time you start Windows.

• Icon Shepherd offers an option to keep track of the icons when they are moved and remember the icon positions automatically for you after each such change. This way, if you forget to store the icon layout at some point, you could restore them from one of the automatically created restore points.

Did we mention that Icon Shepherd is free for personal use on one home computer? Download and give it a try today! If it does not do a good enough job for you, use Windows Settings or Control Panel to uninstall Icon Shepherd from your computer (no hard feelings!)

Happy icon herding!

Download IconShepherd • Purchase IconShepherd

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