IconMan

IconMan allows users to conveniently set custom icons for their Windowd directories.

TODO: There will be a cool .mp4 here at some point.

Usually, this process requires several tedious steps:

1. Right click a folder
2. Click "Show More Options" (on Windows 11)
3. Click "Properties"
4. Select the "Customize" tab
5. Click "Change Icon..."
6. Select a .dll or .ico file containing the desired icon
7. Click OK

Notably, only one .dll or .ico file can be viewed at a time, and only ~28 icons are visible on screen at once.

By default, IconMan loads several .dlls that contain useful icons, and allows you to view as many as your screen resolution permits. Users can add additional .dll or .ico files, and IconMan will remember them next time by storing the icon sources in %LocalAppData%\IconMan. Frequently used icons can be favorited for convenience.

IconMan (like many men) isn't pretty, but it gets the job done 😎.

Installation

Simply download the exe from the github releases and run!

CI

Build

dotnet build

Bundle

Test

Lint

Implementation Notes

IconMan uses the MVVM architecture via Avalonia and Mvvm.CommunityToolkit. The Win32 API is used to load icons and modify destktop.ini, which stores custom icon information. (System files such as these are hidden by default.) The desktop.ini can store custom icon information in a few ways, but we support the simplest, which is the form I have observed in the wild:

[.ShellClassInfo]
IconResource=C:\Windows\System32\imageres.dll,221

In some circumstances, the shell icon cache needs to be invalidated for customized icons to register. My testing on Windows 11 suggests that explorer.exe is pretty good about doing this automatically, so we don't bother with it.

Filesystem

The directory hierarchy is as follows:

|-- IconMan/         # IconMan library linked by Desktop exe & Tests
|   |-- Assets/      # Resources including icons & svg dimensions
|   |-- Models/      # Plain old data used by Services
|   |-- Services/    # Interface for reading system state into Models
|   |-- Util/        # Miscellaneous helper code
|   |-- ViewModels/  # Data binding between View <=> Serivce/Models
|   `-- Views/       # XAML files
|-- IconMan.Desktop/ # Desktop exe project; not very interesting
`-- IconMan.Tests/   # Automated sanity tests

Services

Services are registered to the IoC container in IconMan/App.axaml.cs. Each service has an interface to assist with testing. IDirectoryIconService is manages the custom icons on directories, IIconService loads icons from .dll and .ico files, and ISettingsService persistently stores used .dlls and favorited icons.

Models

On Windows, an icon is loaded by offsetting into a .dll by index, starting at 0. Files can be queried for the number of icons they contain, but icon indices can change across application versions. Some files provide stable identifiers for icons at negative numbers, but we don't support these.

Views

MainView.axaml.cs contains the only code-behind for opening file dialogs. IconView.xaml is used to show a single loaded icon and allow users to register it as a favorite.

Roadmap

Fancy TODOs:

• desktop.ini needs to be set as a system file (not working on new dirs)
• Favorite icons

---

• dotnet format + xaml + editorconfig
• AOT standalone binary
• Github actions
• Windows Defender upload
• New Icon
• Test Avalonia Types https://docs.avaloniaui.net/docs/concepts/headless/headless-xunit
• Design-time data https://docs.avaloniaui.net/docs/guides/implementation-guides/how-to-use-design-time-data