The "graphics" used by the tiles in Windows 8/10 are not icons – they use regular .png files, but maybe it would be a good idea if we wrote an article on where to find them. 🙂
I’ve looked at a couple of (cr)Apps I have installed and they do use PNGs. Actually, I was surprised at the images TheWeatherNetwork app has. It includes a folder for BING.MAPS with an amazing collection of (tiny) images.
I found an article on changing the tile image on another site. Too bad MS made it so difficult, compared to changing the icon on a pre-Win 8 shortcut … It is definitely a retro step in the “Retro” (aka Metro) “new and improved” user interface.
Jerry Lee Cline
8 years ago
This has been a very interesting and informative experience about Windows 10 icons and how to access them. I love to customize my PC so “thank you very much”.
HbiPP3Y4Hk
7 years ago
This post is completely awesome!,
It has liked to me very much and now my life is better too!.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for this. It was exactly what I was looking for!
Billy
6 years ago
Thank you very much for the intel!
Noah
6 years ago
I like creating the library folders on my secondary hdd & pinning them to Quick Access. Recently I started to link them with the default library icons (Desktop, Pictures, Music etc.) I couldn’t find the Music library icon for sh**! This gave so much peace of mind! Thank you very much, glad to see you posting things like this.
Kampfferkel
6 years ago
Very helpful, but where can I find the regular store-icon in win 10?
Rick Enbach
6 years ago
This didn’t work for me. My windows does not have one single .dll file or folder as listed in these samples.
The search continues.
Thank you so much. I’ve been searching for Win 10 explorer icon to replace this ugly Clover icon on Task Bar.
Dan
6 years ago
OMG, thank you!
John
5 years ago
Thanks a lot for this information, you really helped me out big time with a problem I have had for years – Cheers
wariobros194
5 years ago
there is other dll files that have icons: ActionCenterCPL.dll, (contains action center icons) aclui.dll, (error and info icons) autoplay.dll, (an autoplay icon) comctl32.dll, (a bunch of windows xp icons) comres.dll, (some windows 7/vista icons and user icons) xwizards.dll, (installer icon) ncpa.cpl (connection icon) and desk.cpi (personalisation icon)
I found the .dll right where you said they would be, but I am having trouble opening them. I have a large music library consisting of full albums. I previously used the album artwork on the album folder.Now whenever I right click on any folder and choose properties, then customize tab, change icon is no longer there only “folder pictures” choose a file to display picture on folder. When I put the path in address bar it takes me to icon folder but asks me to select app to open system file. Then when I choose an app it still won’t open. Sorry for the rambling.
Cindy
5 years ago
Very helpful. For gameux.dll, I got no icons exist, but imageres.dll has the icons you showed for gameux.dll picture. Here are some more images:
comres.dll, url.dll (has Internet Explorer default icon for websites with no favicon.ico). system32mstsc.exe also has more remote desktop icons.
Pedro LM
5 years ago
Great article, thanks! Those screenshots look really nice; may I ask what tool you’re using to browse the icons within each file?
Windows icons can be extracted from their DLLs using 7-Zip (www.7-zip.org). Open the DLL (or EXE) in 7-Zip and extract the folder “.rsrcICON”. The extracted folder contains all the icons in ICO format. If necessary, you should be able to find many free programs that can convert ICO to PNG, JPG or GIF.
To find more icons, just open any DLL or EXE in 7-Zip, and look for the folder “.rsrcICON”; not all of those files contain icons, but many do.
R. Hansen
4 years ago
inetcpl.cpl has a nice house icon I use in it. Other .cpl files will have icons as well.
Mario
4 years ago
Great job! thanks
YanAndrew
4 years ago
Hi Guys,
Following the latest Windows 10 Update, the icons seem to have been moved and can no longer be found in the imageres.dll and shell32.dll files.
Do you guys know where have they been moved to?
I am also looking for the Control Panel Applets (Category View) GUIDs. Anyone know where or how I can do that?
> Following the latest Windows 10 Update, the icons seem
> to have been moved and can no longer be found in the
> imageres.dll and shell32.dll files.
> Do you guys know where have they been moved to?
They are now located in folder “C:WindowsSystemResources”. You will find “imageres.dll.mun”, “shell32.dll.mun” and much more. Despite of the file extension you can still use them like the former dlls.
David
4 years ago
Very useful thank you. FYI I was easily able to extract icons and images from the dll files using an open source software tool called Greenfish Icon Editor Pro.
If you are a gluten for punishment and want more icon locations, then use the Nirsoft app that hunts them down.
I did and got nearly 5000 (!!) just looking in c:WindowsSystem32*.dll.
I was unable to copy the list as my laptop did not like it !!
So knock yourself and get looking.
Whilst on the subject of ‘obscure’ material, you might try :-
c:WindowsSystem32*.png
Some of the items yield just one ‘piccy’, whilst others more.
Glad to help. Do not hesitate to subscribe to our newsletter, for more useful content.
PlÃnio Larrubia
4 years ago
This was so useful to creating a shortcut via .vbs file inside .cmd file, Thanks!!!
friendly_neighborhood_spider
4 years ago
psst: You can use “Resource Hacker” to extract icons from dll and exe files.
Rudi
4 years ago
I have a question rather than a comment.
When storing all my CD’s to a hard disk, the program I use creates a folder that contains all songs. That folder is shown like a kind of open folder and the cover of the CD ls visible in there. Where can I find in W10 that image that somehow must be created. I convert the music to .flac files and when I play any track the Media Player also shows the cover of the CD. Is there somewhere an image imbedded in the .flac file?? Again the same question, where is this file located in W10?
Thank you for a reply
This was an interesting article, it didn’t give a direct answer as to what I’m wanting to do. At this point all I’m wanting to do is just change on system icon, it’s the one for windows security, as most people already know..microsoft has been changing some of the program icon’s in recent updates. I think in my case I might have created my own problem, I’m a windows 10 insider so that lets me evaluate new feature’s before they get released to the general public. I was in the fast branch release, on one of the most recent fast build release’s, something caused an issue with my computer and I couldn’t perform the ‘go back to previous build’ procedure due to me deleting the windows.old file (that’s one way to learn a lesson the hard way). So I decided to leave the fast build branch and switch to the slow build branch, but the only way I could do that was to do a clean install (which I really hate doing) anyway after I did that some of the icon’s that had already been changed in the fast branch reverted back to the original icon’s contained in the slow branch. The good thing is I have a file with virtually all or almost all of the new icon’s in it. All I have to do know is find where the icon’s actually are located so I can get a chance to change them. I’ve already installed this program on my computer: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/ which looks promising, so I’ll just be patient and just see what happens.
L. Morales
3 years ago
Excellent article. Very helpful
Thomas Munn
3 years ago
Obviously, this has not been written by a Microsoft Official. It gives a full answer.
IconViewer
3 years ago
You have this extension IconViewer that makes a tab ‘ICONS’ in properties and the ability to save any icon in ico, bmp or png format. Also, the icons in Windows Vista/7/8 are much better. But thanks for the information, almost every .dll file is present in my Windows 8.1 system32 folder, and they are great!
Icons Lover
3 years ago
slui.exe has icons about activation
sarah
3 years ago
So useful, thank you!
I’m on the hunt for the Windows 10 downloads icon sans folder (just down arrow). Can seem to find it anywhere. Please reply if you know where it is!
Thanks,
Russ H.
3 years ago
inetcpl.cpl contains a few icons, including a nice house in the first slot that I use for my home folder.
Jehson
3 years ago
where are the windows 10 start icons? those are old icons
documents, pictures, settings, power
under user -> change account settings, Lock, Sign-Out
WOW! What an exhaustive list! And very helpful as well.. I have bookmarked it and refer back to it often. Thank you for all the time you put into this.
Thank you very much. If every answer\explanation were as extensive, clear and right to the point as yours I think this world would be a much better place…
Inservio
2 years ago
DDOres.dll contains the Device Category resources, useful for me because it has device icons not included in other sets, and above all: a shedload of WHITE icons, which is perfect for visually separating important things from everything eles in a folder.
Pavel
1 year ago
mssvp.dll contains icons from Outlook.
EsulatArfn
3 months ago
do C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wscript.exe It Has Icons Used By Microsoft ® Windows Based Script Host (4 icons in wscript) and do %systemroot%/system32/cleanmgr.exe It has 3 icons used by Disk Cleanup please add these so we can help others find new icons
Ida
3 months ago
I think i found a bluetooth icon!
C:\Windows\System32\fsquirt.exe
shortened path: %systemroot%/System32/fsquirt.exe
CreativeTools
3 months ago
time for Windows Based Script Host Icons! found at C:\Windows\System32\wscript.exe
EsulatArfn
3 months ago
CreativeTools I Already Did wscript.exe at SysWOW64
Great list, for Win 7 and earlier icons.
What about the graphics used by those great big ugly Win 8/10 tiles?
Do you have a similar list for Office icons?
The "graphics" used by the tiles in Windows 8/10 are not icons – they use regular .png files, but maybe it would be a good idea if we wrote an article on where to find them. 🙂
Thanks.
I’ve looked at a couple of (cr)Apps I have installed and they do use PNGs. Actually, I was surprised at the images TheWeatherNetwork app has. It includes a folder for BING.MAPS with an amazing collection of (tiny) images.
I found an article on changing the tile image on another site. Too bad MS made it so difficult, compared to changing the icon on a pre-Win 8 shortcut … It is definitely a retro step in the “Retro” (aka Metro) “new and improved” user interface.
This has been a very interesting and informative experience about Windows 10 icons and how to access them. I love to customize my PC so “thank you very much”.
This post is completely awesome!,
It has liked to me very much and now my life is better too!.
Thank you very much.
Happy to help. 🙂
Thanks for this. It was exactly what I was looking for!
Thank you very much for the intel!
I like creating the library folders on my secondary hdd & pinning them to Quick Access. Recently I started to link them with the default library icons (Desktop, Pictures, Music etc.) I couldn’t find the Music library icon for sh**! This gave so much peace of mind! Thank you very much, glad to see you posting things like this.
Very helpful, but where can I find the regular store-icon in win 10?
This didn’t work for me. My windows does not have one single .dll file or folder as listed in these samples.
The search continues.
Try this to show the file DLL extensions:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/show-file-extensions-in-windows
Thank you so much. I’ve been searching for Win 10 explorer icon to replace this ugly Clover icon on Task Bar.
OMG, thank you!
Thanks a lot for this information, you really helped me out big time with a problem I have had for years – Cheers
there is other dll files that have icons: ActionCenterCPL.dll, (contains action center icons) aclui.dll, (error and info icons) autoplay.dll, (an autoplay icon) comctl32.dll, (a bunch of windows xp icons) comres.dll, (some windows 7/vista icons and user icons) xwizards.dll, (installer icon) ncpa.cpl (connection icon) and desk.cpi (personalisation icon)
Thanks for sharing this information.
I found the .dll right where you said they would be, but I am having trouble opening them. I have a large music library consisting of full albums. I previously used the album artwork on the album folder.Now whenever I right click on any folder and choose properties, then customize tab, change icon is no longer there only “folder pictures” choose a file to display picture on folder. When I put the path in address bar it takes me to icon folder but asks me to select app to open system file. Then when I choose an app it still won’t open. Sorry for the rambling.
Very helpful. For gameux.dll, I got no icons exist, but imageres.dll has the icons you showed for gameux.dll picture. Here are some more images:
comres.dll, url.dll (has Internet Explorer default icon for websites with no favicon.ico). system32mstsc.exe also has more remote desktop icons.
Great article, thanks! Those screenshots look really nice; may I ask what tool you’re using to browse the icons within each file?
…d’oh, I just noticed that you explain this at the end of the article. Sorry!
Glad that you found the answer. 🙂
Windows icons can be extracted from their DLLs using 7-Zip (www.7-zip.org). Open the DLL (or EXE) in 7-Zip and extract the folder “.rsrcICON”. The extracted folder contains all the icons in ICO format. If necessary, you should be able to find many free programs that can convert ICO to PNG, JPG or GIF.
To find more icons, just open any DLL or EXE in 7-Zip, and look for the folder “.rsrcICON”; not all of those files contain icons, but many do.
inetcpl.cpl has a nice house icon I use in it. Other .cpl files will have icons as well.
Great job! thanks
Hi Guys,
Following the latest Windows 10 Update, the icons seem to have been moved and can no longer be found in the imageres.dll and shell32.dll files.
Do you guys know where have they been moved to?
I am also looking for the Control Panel Applets (Category View) GUIDs. Anyone know where or how I can do that?
> Following the latest Windows 10 Update, the icons seem
> to have been moved and can no longer be found in the
> imageres.dll and shell32.dll files.
> Do you guys know where have they been moved to?
They are now located in folder “C:WindowsSystemResources”. You will find “imageres.dll.mun”, “shell32.dll.mun” and much more. Despite of the file extension you can still use them like the former dlls.
Very useful thank you. FYI I was easily able to extract icons and images from the dll files using an open source software tool called Greenfish Icon Editor Pro.
Biggest thanks about this software!
Great list! just what I was looking for 😀
If you are a gluten for punishment and want more icon locations, then use the Nirsoft app that hunts them down.
I did and got nearly 5000 (!!) just looking in c:WindowsSystem32*.dll.
I was unable to copy the list as my laptop did not like it !!
So knock yourself and get looking.
Whilst on the subject of ‘obscure’ material, you might try :-
c:WindowsSystem32*.png
Some of the items yield just one ‘piccy’, whilst others more.
C:WindowsSystem32imagesp1.dll
Thank you for this helpful overview!
Glad to help. Do not hesitate to subscribe to our newsletter, for more useful content.
This was so useful to creating a shortcut via .vbs file inside .cmd file, Thanks!!!
psst: You can use “Resource Hacker” to extract icons from dll and exe files.
I have a question rather than a comment.
When storing all my CD’s to a hard disk, the program I use creates a folder that contains all songs. That folder is shown like a kind of open folder and the cover of the CD ls visible in there. Where can I find in W10 that image that somehow must be created. I convert the music to .flac files and when I play any track the Media Player also shows the cover of the CD. Is there somewhere an image imbedded in the .flac file?? Again the same question, where is this file located in W10?
Thank you for a reply
This was an interesting article, it didn’t give a direct answer as to what I’m wanting to do. At this point all I’m wanting to do is just change on system icon, it’s the one for windows security, as most people already know..microsoft has been changing some of the program icon’s in recent updates. I think in my case I might have created my own problem, I’m a windows 10 insider so that lets me evaluate new feature’s before they get released to the general public. I was in the fast branch release, on one of the most recent fast build release’s, something caused an issue with my computer and I couldn’t perform the ‘go back to previous build’ procedure due to me deleting the windows.old file (that’s one way to learn a lesson the hard way). So I decided to leave the fast build branch and switch to the slow build branch, but the only way I could do that was to do a clean install (which I really hate doing) anyway after I did that some of the icon’s that had already been changed in the fast branch reverted back to the original icon’s contained in the slow branch. The good thing is I have a file with virtually all or almost all of the new icon’s in it. All I have to do know is find where the icon’s actually are located so I can get a chance to change them. I’ve already installed this program on my computer: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/ which looks promising, so I’ll just be patient and just see what happens.
Excellent article. Very helpful
Obviously, this has not been written by a Microsoft Official. It gives a full answer.
You have this extension IconViewer that makes a tab ‘ICONS’ in properties and the ability to save any icon in ico, bmp or png format. Also, the icons in Windows Vista/7/8 are much better. But thanks for the information, almost every .dll file is present in my Windows 8.1 system32 folder, and they are great!
slui.exe has icons about activation
So useful, thank you!
I’m on the hunt for the Windows 10 downloads icon sans folder (just down arrow). Can seem to find it anywhere. Please reply if you know where it is!
Thanks,
inetcpl.cpl contains a few icons, including a nice house in the first slot that I use for my home folder.
where are the windows 10 start icons? those are old icons
documents, pictures, settings, power
under user -> change account settings, Lock, Sign-Out
%SystemRoot%\System32\Dsui.dll
Contains generic PC icon.
Thanks for this article – super helpful to find some different icons for shortcuts that do a similar task, but need to be differentiated.
You do realize your paths are all jacked up, right?
What do you mean? Later edit: we took a look, identified the problem, and fixed it. Thanks for letting us know.
It worked, thanks! 🙂
Finding a dll not mentioned that contain some icons:
in System32 directory: wcnwiz.dll
The path for entry #11 is broken, i. e. it’s missing all backslashes.
How it should be written: %systemroot%\system32\netshell.dll
How it’s actually written: %systemroot%system32netshell.dll
Fixed. Thanks for the feedback.
WOW! What an exhaustive list! And very helpful as well.. I have bookmarked it and refer back to it often. Thank you for all the time you put into this.
Glad to help. For more useful tutorials, don’t hesitate to subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.digitalcitizen.life/newsletter/
Thank you very much. If every answer\explanation were as extensive, clear and right to the point as yours I think this world would be a much better place…
DDOres.dll contains the Device Category resources, useful for me because it has device icons not included in other sets, and above all: a shedload of WHITE icons, which is perfect for visually separating important things from everything eles in a folder.
mssvp.dll contains icons from Outlook.
do C:\Windows\SysWOW64\wscript.exe It Has Icons Used By Microsoft ® Windows Based Script Host (4 icons in wscript) and do %systemroot%/system32/cleanmgr.exe It has 3 icons used by Disk Cleanup please add these so we can help others find new icons
I think i found a bluetooth icon!
C:\Windows\System32\fsquirt.exe
shortened path: %systemroot%/System32/fsquirt.exe
time for Windows Based Script Host Icons! found at C:\Windows\System32\wscript.exe
CreativeTools I Already Did wscript.exe at SysWOW64