How to Change the Icon for a File Type in Windows?

It’s surprising that Windows doesn’t have a built-in option to allow users to set custom icons for file types. If you have a custom file type and the corresponding program doesn’t have a nice-looking icon in its .exe or .dll resource, you can change or customize the default icon for that file type manually.

This article explains how to change the default icon for a file type using different methods in Windows. Instructions apply to all versions of Windows, including Windows 10

How to Change the Default Icon for a File Type?

You can change the default icon for a file type using the built-in Registry Editor. In the second method, let’s see how to change the default icon using Default Programs Editor.

Method 1: Change file type icon using the Registry Editor

Let’s assume you want to change the file type icon for .txt files, and here is how to do that.

1. Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
2. Navigate to the following branch:
3. In the right-pane, note down the value data for Progid (e.g. txtfile ). This is the user chosen (via Default Programs or Open with dialog) Programmatic Identifier for the file extension.

Registry Branch Not Found?

If the DefaultIcon key does not exist by default, you need to create it manually.

In the right-pane, double-click (default) and mention the path to your custom icon (.ico file or reference to a icon inside a EXE/DLL file. See “Icons From DLL/EXE Files” paragraph at the end of this article).

Edit the (default) value data, mentioning the path to a icon file. For this example, I used a notepad icon file from the web, saved it to a permanent location and mentioned the full path.If you’re using a custom icon file, make sure it’s at least 128 x 128, although it’s not a rule but this is to make sure icons look nice when folder view is set to large or extra large icons.

Exit the Registry Editor.

Logoff and login back, or refresh the icons and see if the Text file icons are now updated.

Icons From DLL/EXE Files

If you don’t have a custom .ico file, you may use the icon picker dialog box to choose an icon from a EXE/DLL file. To launch the icon picker dialog, right-click on a folder in your system, click Properties. Click the Customize tab, and click Change Icon… button. Use the icon picker to choose the icon and make a note of the index. The index starts from “0” and you need to proceed vertically when counting (top to bottom.)

Browse to shell32.dll or imageres.dll and note down the icon index, simply cancel the icon picker dialog and close folder properties dialog.

For example, to set the 260 th icon in Shell32.dll, mention the following path, in Step 8:

To make it clear, this procedure doesn’t change the file type associations, only the icon assigned to that file type. If the icons don’t update even if you restart Windows, clear and rebuild the icon cache.

Additional note

As the icon change is made to the ProgId txtfile in the registry, it also affects the other file extensions that use the same ProgId. For instance, in my system, the txtfile ProgID is being used by .log , .scp & .wtx file extensions. Those files will also show up with the new icon.

To know which file extensions are using a ProgID (i.e., txtfile), run this command in the Command Prompt window:

RELATED: See article How to Remove File Type Associations Using the Registry Editor for more information on File extension → ProgID mapping.

It’s possible to change the default icon for a file type without affecting other file types. To do that, you’ll need to create a new file class or ProgID for the file extension, and assign the default icon in the newly created file class.

Method 2: Change file type icon using Default Programs Editor

Don’t want to edit the registry to change file type icons? There are 3rd party tools like Default Programs Editor and FileTypesMan that can change the file type icons and association settings.

Default Programs Editor is a very useful tool which helps you to edit file type associations, add or remove AutoPlay handlers and static context menu entries. We’ve covered Default Programs Editor before. Default Programs Editor – A Useful File Association Editor for Windows

In this method, let us see how you can accomplish the task using the Default Programs Editor.

1. Download Default Programs Editor, unzip and run the executable.
2. Select File Type Settings
3. Click Icon
4. Select the file extension for which you want to change the icon, in the next screen.
5. This screen shows the current icon for the file type. To change it, click on the Browse button.
6. In the icon picker dialog that’s displayed, browse and locate an icon, or point to a custom .ico file if you have one. The built-in imageres.dll and shell32.dll files contain many icons for you to choose from.
7. Click the Save Icon button to save the changes to the registry.

As you can see in the screenshot, you also have the option to save the settings to a file. In case you need to apply the changes to several computers, you can output the settings to a .REG file. This can be done by clicking the arrow mark near the Save Icon button, and choosing Save to .reg file. You can deploy or apply the .reg file on other computers without having to run the utility again.

That’s it! The default icon for .txt file type is changed would now refresh or update automatically!

[Before] .txt files showing standard icons [After] .txt files showing custom icons

Method 3: Change file type icon using FileTypesMan

FileTypesMan is an alternative to the Folder Options “File Types” tab (XP-era) in Windows. It displays the list of all file extensions and types registered on your computer. For each file type, the following information is displayed: Type Name, Description, MIME Type, Perceived Type, Flags, Browser Flags, and more. FileTypesMan also allows you to easily edit the properties and flags of each file type, as well as it allows you to add, edit, and remove actions in a file type. This utility works in all Windows versions including, Windows 10.

Screenshots

%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-102 is the Windows-default icon for .txt files. Windows-default icon for .txt files

After setting the default icon to %SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,14 via the icon picker dialog, here is how it shows up: Customized .txt files icon

Change the icon for unknown and extensionless files

File types that are not registered with the system and files that have no extension are assigned a generic icon from shell32.dll,0 by default. The unknown or generic icon for unregistered file types and extensionless files can be customized as per your choice so that you don’t have to see the boring icon anymore.

Windows stores the icon setting for unknown file types and extensionless files in this registry key:

The (default) or the unnamed value points to the following icon resource by default:

Using the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe), you can change the (default) value so that it points to a .ico file that you already have or an icon resource inside a .dll or .exe file by mentioning the file name and resource identifier.

Using the Icon picker (a.k.a. the Change Icon dialog), you can use a relevant icon in shell32.dll, 224 that can be assigned for unregistered and extensionless files. You just need to replace the existing Value data ( %SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll,0 ) with %SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll,224 using the Registry Editor or using the REG files below.

Logoff and login back to your account.

Here is how it looked before:

We’ve changed that to:

Tip: In case the icons don’t automatically refresh even after a logoff-logon cycle, you can force a shell icons refresh using the ie4uinit.exe method or using Default Programs.

Hope the above guide helped you change file type icons on your Windows 10 computer easily!

How to change File and Folder Icons in Windows 10

What do you think about the default icons on Windows 10? Well, they look great, but with time appear boring, isn’t it? You would have tried to cut the boredom by customizing your device by changing the themes and fonts. But you can take this customization to a whole new level by changing the default Windows icons and make your PC look unique and better sorted. In this Windows guide, we take you through the different ways to change any icons on Windows 10.

Why customize Windows 10 icons?

Killing ennui is just one reason, customization can be done for many different purposes. Few of them include:

• Give your PC a personal spin
• Make your environment look catchy and trendy
• Make your system more user-friendly
• Highlight the importance of a particular icon by making it look unique
• To locate an important icon immediately from a huge crowd of icons

Along with the array of benefits listed above, there are many different types of icons that can be modified on Windows 10. These include desktop icons, taskbar icons, folder icons, and shortcut icons. To know how to customize these, let’s move on the method.

Where can you find new or custom icons for Windows 10?

Before we can start changing icons on Windows 10, we will need some icons to replace the existing ones. The Operating System has a collection of built-in icons, but they might not be that great. The good news is that there are many online resources offering millions of high-quality impressive icons. You can grab them in a pack at once, or download single icons based on your likings. Few popular icon repositories are FlatIcon, Findicons, IconArchive, DeviantArt, or GraphicBurger – all of these have loads of free icons.

In case you just can’t find the icon of your choice, you can even try making high-resolution icons out of any image.

How to change Icons in Windows 10

Now let’s look at the methods of changing different types of icons one after one-

1. Desktop icons
2. Shortcut icons
3. Taskbar icons
4. Folder icons
5. File icons
6. Drive icons.

1] Customize your Desktop Icons

What are ‘Desktop Icons’? The icons like This PC, Network, Recycle Bin, and your User folder all fall in this category. Even though modern versions of Windows do not show them all on the desktop, users can always restore these missing icons and have them appear on your system’s desktop or even change these icons even if they appear elsewhere on your system.

For customizing desktop icons follow the below-mentioned steps:

1] Go to ‘Settings’

2] Hit ‘Personalization’

3] Now click on ‘Themes’, and go to ‘Desktop Icon Settings’.

4] Once you click on ‘Desktop Icon Settings’ a separate ‘Desktop Icon Settings’ window will appear.

5] In the ‘Desktop Icons’ section, check the checkbox corresponding to the specific item whose icon you wish to customize.

6] Now hit the ‘Change Icon’ button.

7] Once you click the ‘Change Icon’ button, a list of different in-built icons will appear on the screen. To choose from these in-built Windows icons select one and hit the ‘OK’ button.

This will change the icon.

To select a custom icon hit the ‘Browse’ button to go to the folder having the icon of your choice and hit ‘Open’ to upload the icon on the Windows icon list; then select the uploaded icon. Also, if you browse for your own icons, you can select any EXE, DLL, or ICO file.

8] Finally, click the ‘Apply’ button and then hit on the ‘OK’ button to save your settings.

Now, your ‘Computer’ icon will look like the below image.

To reverse the change, go back to the ‘Desktop Icon Settings’ window, hit ‘Restore Default’ button and hit ‘Apply’ and then click ‘Ok’ to save settings.

2] Customize Shortcut Icons

Adding a shortcut for folders and applications makes things very easy and simple on any operating system. Users can alter the icon for a shortcut in Windows and this works for all sorts of shortcuts including a shortcut to an app, folder, or even Command Prompt command. Here are the steps to customize any shortcut icon:

1] Go to your ‘Desktop’ and select the shortcut you wish to change the icon for

2] Right-click the shortcut and select ‘Properties’.

3] On the ‘Shortcut’ tab, select the ‘Change Icon’ button.

4] This opens the standard ‘Change Icon’ window you saw above.

5] Now follow the same steps as listed in the above ‘Desktop Icon’ option to select the icon and apply settings.

3] Customize your Taskbar Icons

The icons pinned to your taskbar are also shortcuts; you can customize these in nearly the same way that you customize any shortcut icon. But there are a few things you would need to keep in mind here:

1. You can customize only those icons that are pinned to the taskbar and not the ones which are currently running and appearing there.
2. For an app that is pinned, but is currently running, you will need to close the app to begin customizing the shortcut icon.

Start by holding the ‘Shift’ key and right-click the app icon and choose ‘Properties’.

Now, follow the same steps as listed in the ‘Desktop Icon’ option above to set a new icon.

4] Customize Folder Icons

To customize the Folder icons in Windows 10, perform the following steps:

1] Right-click the folder and select ‘Properties’ in the context menu.

2] Select ‘Customize’ and hit ‘Change Icon’ in the Properties window.

3] You can replace the folder icon with a basic/personalized icon.

4] Now click ‘OK’ to save the changes.

5] Finally, hit ‘OK’ to finish changing the folder icon.

Done, this will change your specific folder icons.

You might want to also take a look at these Free software to change the Folder icon color.

5] Customize Specific File Types Icons

Personalizing the icon of a specific type of file demands third-party tools like File Types Manager. Follow these steps:

1] Get freeware FileTypesMan on your system

2] In the ‘Find Box’ locate the file type that you want to change its icon for.

3] Now close the Find box.

4] Right-click the file and choose ‘Edit Selected File Type’.

5] In Default Icon option, click the 3-dots button in the pop-out window.

6] Select one of the existing icons or input your own icon by clicking Browse > click OK.

7] Finally, hit ‘Ok’ to execute the changes.

7] Change Drive icons

You can change the Icons of your Windows Drives easily using freeware Drive Icon Changer or My Drive Icon.

In this way, you can customize different types of icons in Windows 10. So, keep customizing and add new and interesting icons to your applications or folders. And yes, if you wish to revert the changes, you will only need to hit the ‘Restore Defaults’ button in the corresponding Properties window and click on it.

Date: January 2, 2020 Tags: Features, Icons

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Ankit Gupta is a writer by profession and has more than 7 years of global writing experience on technology and other areas. He follows technological developments and likes to write about Windows & IT security. He has a deep liking for wild life and has written a book on Top Tiger Parks of India.