Indeed, desktop ions are not anymore provided by nautilus. They are now provided by a Gnome Shell Extension. The icons can be resized, but the options are limited to some preset sizes and are currently not exposed in the default user interface.
Using Tweaks - The easiest way to change the icon size is to install Gnome Tweaks (aka "Tweaks"). On the "Extensions" tab of Tweaks, you will see a cog next to the "Desktop icons" extension. Click the cog to access configuration options for the extension, which include a choice between "Small", "Standard" and "Large" desktop icons.
Using the terminal - Alternatively, you can control the size with a terminal command:
gsettings get org.gnome.shell.extensions.desktop-icons icon-size 'standard'
Other possibilities instead of 'standard'
are 'small'
and 'large'
You can learn this with the command
gsettings range org.gnome.shell.extensions.desktop-icons icon-size
To reset to default:
gsettings reset org.gnome.shell.extensions.desktop-icons icon-size
Customize icon size - For advanced users only
Only three preset icon sizes are available in the extension's preferences. Customizing these sizes unfortunately requires hacking the source code of the extension because icon size presets are hard-coded in the file prefs.js
.
const ICON_SIZE = { 'small': 48, 'standard': 64, 'large': 96 };
const ICON_WIDTH = { 'small': 120, 'standard': 128, 'large': 128 };
const ICON_HEIGHT = { 'small': 98, 'standard': 114, 'large': 146 };
The system wide extension is installed in /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano
.