The icons maybe make a lot more sense in a dark mode themed Notepad++

Yes I can see that they would. But I love knowing that I can create my own custom ‘default’ icons.

I don’t like the look of the Fluent ones. I find them boring

I think these icons were introduced around the time of “dark mode”. The icons maybe make a lot more sense in a dark mode themed Notepad++.

Thanks Peter, it turns out Fluent didn’t break the icons at all. It was my Customize Toolbar button icons because I only had 16x16 bmp ones setup. So I can fix those. But, no, I don’t like the look of the Fluent ones. I find them boring. And with CT installed, there are two different ‘looks’ between the Fluent ones and the CT ones. So, yes, I guess creating my own will be the way to go. I’ll check out the link :-D

toolbar buttons are quite small. … Fluent large icons are too big

There are two sizes of toolbar icons: small (16x16) and large (32x32).

If it was just that you didn’t like the Fluent Large because you dislike Fluent shapes, you could follow the User Manual’s instructions for toolbar customization and use the suggested set or create your own set of large icons.

But if the small are too small for you, and the large are too large for you, then there’s not much that can be done: I believe that even if you created a set of icons that was 24x24, Notepad++ would either stretch them to 32x32 or shrink them to 16x16.

Fluent icons isn’t possible because some icons broke when I tried dark mode

I find that surprising: the Fluent icons have been tested under both light and dark modes, so they should work. Did you try re-starting Notepad++ after toggling mode to see if they come back?

text in dialog windows … changed the Windows font size

You might try searching the internet for “how to change dialog font size in Windows 11”, because Windows OS does control the font size in the dialogs that Notepad++ uses. There is no setting in Notepad++ that can affect the font size or family for menu and dialog fonts. Sorry.

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Since this is a new laptop, I wonder if maybe it has a 4K monitor? If so, you might try “display scaling” in your Windows settings, or you might otherwise search this forum for “4K”, as there might be other applicable advice there for you. (If you aren’t on a 4K monitor, then of course that latter won’t help you, though maybe display scaling would.)