How To Fix: Recycle Bin Icon Not Refreshing On Windows 10

Generally, there will be a Recycle Bin icon on your desktop/laptop and it will change slightly according to the size of files stored in it. After you put new data into the Recycle Bin or cleared/moved files from it, you’ll notice the slight change.

Windows 10 Recycle Bin Icon Not Refreshing

However, the problem occurs: users find the Recycle Bin icon does not refresh itself. How does this happen? What measures should you take to fix Recycle Bin icon not refreshing?

How to Fix When Recycle Bin Icon Does Not Refresh

When the Recycle Bin icon is not changed automatically to full or empty state, you should realize there’s a problem with it. The following content shows you some useful solutions. Please follow the trouble-shooting steps carefully to change Recycle Bin icon in order to fix the problem.

Fix 1: check Recycle Bin.

First of all, you should check if the Recycle Bin on your PC is corrupted or not. If you just find the Recycle Bin icon not refreshing after you have installed new third-party Theme or an Icon Package, please try to uninstall them and see what happens. Try to set the theme to Windows Classic and set Windows Aero default.

Fix 2: change desktop icons.

How to change Recycle Bin icon:

1. Right click on your desktop.
2. Choose Personalize.
3. Select Themes in left sidebar.
4. Scroll down the right pane to find Related Settings area.
5. Click Desktop icon settings link.
6. Choose Recycle Bin (full) and click Change Icon.
7. Select the empty Recycle Bin icon and click OK.
8. Choose Recycle Bin (empty) and click Change Icon.
9. Select the full Recycle Bin icon and click OK.
10. Click on the Apply button at the bottom.
11. Empty the Recycle Bin to see whether the icon changes to the full icon.
12. If it does, please repeat the above steps to change Recycle Bin full and empty icons again to make sure they show the correct icons.

How to recover files after empting the Recycle Bin?

Fix 3: reset Recycle Bin.

1. Repeat step 1 to step 5 in fix 2.
2. Select Recycle Bin (full) and click Restore Default.
3. Select Recycle Bin (empty) and click Restore Default.
4. Click on the OK button at the bottom.

You can also reset the Recycle Bin by using Command Prompt tool (CMD).

1. Click on the search box or search icon on taskbar.
2. Type cmd into it.
3. Right click on Command Prompt from the result.
4. Choose Run as administrator.
5. Type rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.bin and hit Enter.

Do you know you can recover lost files by using CMD?

Fix 4: rebuild thumbnail cache.

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Open this folder path: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer.
3. Select all the Data Base files (.db) you can find in the Explorer folder.
4. Right click on them and choose Delete.
5. Select Yes to confirm deletion.
6. Restart your PC.

Fix 5: edit the Registry. Many users said they have fixed the Recycle Bin icon not refreshing issue by editing the DefaultIcon key manually.

1. Press Start + R to open Run.
2. Type regedit into the textbox.
3. Press Enter to open Registry Editor.
4. Go to this path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\DefaultIcon.
5. Find (Default) string in the right pane and double click on it.
6. Add ,0 to the end of Value data.
7. Click OK to confirm.
8. Repeat step 5 to step 7 for the empty and full strings.
9. Close the Registry Editor and restart computer.

That’s all I want to say about Recycle Bin icon not refreshing.