Where is a .net Application Icon Stored?

Question

I\'m trying to figure out where my application\'s icon is stored in VS 2008. On the startup project\'s application properties, I added an icon with the setting \"Embed manif

Answer 1

It is stored in the unmanaged resource section of an executable. You can see that section with File + Open + File and selecting the DLL or EXE. Open the Icon node. The lowest numbered resource is the one that Windows picks as the application icon.

There's spotty support in the .NET framework for accessing the unmanaged resources of a binary. Your best bet here is to use Icon.ExtractAssociatedIcon() but you cannot control which of the images in the icon you'll get. The pinvoke fallback is LoadImage() but it is difficult to use. By far the best approach is to also make the icon available in your managed resources.

Answer 2

Try this:

var icon = Icon.ExtractAssociatedIcon(Application.ExecutablePath);

Answer 3

The problem with Icon.ExtractAssociatedIcon is that it only extracts one image from the application's icon. However, applications designed for Win7 or newer typically provide icons with several images in different sizes/resolutions. For getting an icon object with all images included, I found a complete solution here:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/29923/Assigning-an-application-s-icon-to-all-forms-in-th