Increase taskbar icons size without affecting programs

I've just migrated to W10 after over a decade of W7, and I really can't adapt to everything being so small... If I change the scale ratio in the Display Settings, then everything (including programs) gets scaled up, which I don't want. I just want to scale up taskbar icons in a way that keeps programs unaffected.

Icon sizes in W7 and W10 for comparison:

No way to do it natively in Windows 10...it's either Small or Large icons in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar

Look into 3rd party solutions such as StartIsBack.

Already mentioned.

I think there could be another solution, but I need your help. I could set W10 scale ratio to 125/150% in order to increase the taskbar size, and then set a global rule for all applications to ignore that. It should be possible I think: I know for sure you can tell an application to ignore W10 High DPI scaling and still render it at 100% (through override), while I don't know if it's possible to set a global rule to always do that.

If you're running Windows 10 Pro, you might check in Group Policy.

Windows key + R, enter gpedit.msc

Apparently the problem is well-known, and hasn't been fixed in 5 years. Basically if you have a big monitor (or worse, a tv) you are quite fu***d, because if you use 100% scaling you get crazy small text and taskbar so that you're going to develop crazy high fatigue, while if you use a higher scaling you end up with blurry text and giant applications. Now I feel really bad for the health of my eyes, as this isn't sustanaible over time.

Take a look at Ease of Access.

Settings > Ease of Access.

I tryed Option 5 here, but it does nothing (programs still open at 125% scaling). Bullet point #2 of the guide has wrong path btw.

The more I browse through the forum posts searching for a solution, the more I find people who think like me (and me).