What is a desktop icon?

A desktop icon is a symbol with text under it that is displayed on the desktop. The desktop is what is displayed when you log in on most operating systems. Common desktop icons are "My Computer" "Recycle Bin" "My documents" shortcuts to programs that are installed. By double clicking on an icon you can open the folder or program related to it.

Desktop icons are the most commonly recognized icons by most people. They are used to convey purpose of an available function on a computer. On a very graphic oriented Windows environment such as Windows XP the common desktop icons you might see are "My Computer", "Recycle Bin", and various file folders with labels.

Other operating systems such as Macintosh, and Linux desktop environments like KDE also use desktop icons in much the same way but the extension, resource or file name suffix differ. Generally icons from one operating system would need to be converted to work on a different OS.