Hi,
How can I either hide or make the status icon in the top left corner of the viewport of the scene viewer?
It is very distracting? but I haven't found any options that would allow me to control the visibility or size of the icon. It doesn't appear to be following the general size preference of the rest of the UI.

Thanks,
M.

Scale of the icon seems to be way off, mine is the size of the icon on the left therefore not bothering at all. Also, you probably want this be at least visible, because a lot of tools have handy hints for the tool options.
I would suggest you to test changing Edit > Prefs > Gen UI > Icon Size and UI Scale (change takes effect on restart). See if it rebuilds the icons correctly.

Turn off the Show Tool Info Panel in Edit > Preferences > HUD.