New Windows 10 Fluent Design Windows Camera Icon

Last Updated on January 21, 2021 by Mathew Diekhake

Apart from getting the features and navigation right, there isn’t much else you can do to a modern operating system other than making sure the graphics upon that navigation are as good as they can be. It is no surprise then that both Apple and Microsoft put a lot of effort into the appearance of the icons you get around the operating system. For Apple, this is on full display immediately from the Dock, which is located at the bottom of the screen, and in our opinion, is definitely part of the attraction when using macOS.

Windows 10 doesn’t have a Dock like macOS does—instead, it prefers to keep the desktop and taskbar mostly clean and uncluttered—but it doesn’t take long after clicking on the famous Windows Start menu before the icons are on full display; and these Windows 10 icons, along with the general UI appearance, are how you immediately know older versions of Windows such as the popular Windows 7 are officially outdated.

That being said, when Windows 10 was first released, it offered a mixture of icons—from Windows XP, Windows 2000, and even dating back as far as Windows 95! When you have icons dating that far back, there are going to be problems with getting those icons to mesh with one another because over time, what is graphically “in-style” changes to a large degree. Subsequently, it only made sense for Microsoft to work on an entirely new icons package for future versions of Windows 10; icons that would all be designed at the same time so not only would they suit each other but so they would also suit the operating system that surrounds them.

The first updated apps to roll out to Windows 10 users are the Mail and Calendar icons. This is likely because they’re viewed the most since they appear at the top of the Start menu and have the largest icons. Expect the rest of the icons to roll out to future builds of Windows 10 very soon.

One of the default applications you get with Windows 10 is the Camera app. This Camera app helps make up the apps you get which are UWP apps (Universal Windows Platform apps). If you aren’t familiar with it already, it might be because, for whatever reason, Microsoft doesn’t have it available from the Start menu as a default tile; rather, you will need to scroll through the list of all apps in the Start menu (on the left-hand side) or search for it via Search in the taskbar so that it appears under the Best Match section or on the right-hand side of the same window where you get a button to open the app. Upon opening the Windows 10 Camera app, assuming your computer has a webcam, you will get a front-facing camera already pointing right at your face—so be careful—or you may get a shock because it’s not the friendliest of cameras either. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive feature to have what is the equivalent of a standard camera app on a modern smartphone operating system available to use from your desktop or laptop. And you could easily argue that Windows 10 offers better integration between the Camera and your pictures and video files because the Windows 10 Camera app links through to your Photos app where you can edit the pictures and video files that you have taken.

New Windows Camera Icons:

Above are two different Windows Camera app icons. The first is the old Windows Camera app icon, which has been updated for a second time. Both of these iterations are relatively new, but Microsoft decided to update it again a second time; the latter Windows Camera icon being the newest and the one currently rolling out to computers.

How the rest of the fluent design system apps, installed Windows apps, and provisioned Windows apps icons appear: