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Mar 21, 2019 This wikiHow teaches you how to change an EXE file's icon on a Windows computer. While you can't normally change the icon of an EXE file itself, you can create a shortcut for the EXE file that you can then edit. If you want to force the EXE file's icon to change, you can use programs such as Resource Hacker or GConvert to do so. Dec 18, 2004 Put an icon on the.exe? - posted in Programming: Does anybody know how to put an icon onto a compiled program. I've got an ico. File to do the job but all I can find is software that replace an exe's icon, which doesn't work for exe's without an icon. I don't know how Dev-C handles resources but it should be in a similar manner (a quick research shows that it seems to use rc script files too). You have to add an icon resource by providing an ID and the path to the icon file or edit the existing resource script file to change the path to your icon file. See also About Resource Files (Windows). In Solution Explorer, right-click the DesktopApp project, choose Add, and then choose New Item. In the Add New Item dialog box, select C File (.cpp). In the Name box, type a name for the file, for example, HelloWindowsDesktop.cpp. Oct 08, 2013 I'd like to use an icon from a c# application that I've developed. I have not been able to add an icon to the app such that it can be selected for use by the shortcut. There is only one icon exposed by the app even though there are multiple icons emmbedded in it. Even if I open the.exe in Visual Studio I only see one icon resource.
If you haven't downloaded and installed Visual Studio and the Visual C++ tools yet, here's how to get started.
Visual Studio 2019 Installation
Welcome to Visual Studio 2019! In this version, it's easy to choose and install just the features you need. And because of its reduced minimum footprint, it installs quickly and with less system impact.
Note
This topic applies to installation of Visual Studio on Windows. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight, cross-platform development environment that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. The Microsoft C/C++ for Visual Studio Code extension supports IntelliSense, debugging, code formatting, auto-completion. Visual Studio for Mac doesn't support Microsoft C++, but does support .NET languages and cross-platform development. For installation instructions, see Install Visual Studio for Mac.
Want to know more about what else is new in this version? See the Visual Studio release notes.
Ready to install? We'll walk you through it, step-by-step.
Step 1 - Make sure your computer is ready for Visual Studio
Before you begin installing Visual Studio:
- Check the system requirements. These requirements help you know whether your computer supports Visual Studio 2019.
- Apply the latest Windows updates. These updates ensure that your computer has both the latest security updates and the required system components for Visual Studio.
- Reboot. The reboot ensures that any pending installs or updates don't hinder the Visual Studio install.
- Free up space. Remove unneeded files and applications from your %SystemDrive% by, for example, running the Disk Cleanup app.
For questions about running previous versions of Visual Studio side by side with Visual Studio 2019, see the Visual Studio 2019 Platform Targeting and Compatibility page.
Step 2 - Download Visual Studio
Next, download the Visual Studio bootstrapper file. To do so, choose the following button, choose the edition of Visual Studio that you want, choose Save, and then choose Open folder.
Step 3 - Install the Visual Studio installer
Run the bootstrapper file to install the Visual Studio Installer. This new lightweight installer includes everything you need to both install and customize Visual Studio.
- From your Downloads folder, double-click the bootstrapper that matches or is similar to one of the following files:
- vs_community.exe for Visual Studio Community
- vs_professional.exe for Visual Studio Professional
- vs_enterprise.exe for Visual Studio Enterprise
If you receive a User Account Control notice, choose Yes. - We'll ask you to acknowledge the Microsoft License Terms and the Microsoft Privacy Statement. Choose Continue.
Step 4 - Choose workloads
After the installer is installed, you can use it to customize your installation by selecting the workloads, or feature sets, that you want. Here's how.
- Find the workload you want in the Installing Visual Studio screen.For core C++ support, choose the 'Desktop development with C++' workload. It comes with the default core editor, which includes basic code editing support for over 20 languages, the ability to open and edit code from any folder without requiring a project, and integrated source code control.Additional workloads support other kinds of C++ development. For example, choose the 'Universal Windows Platform development' workload to create apps that use the Windows Runtime for the Microsoft Store. Choose 'Game development with C++' to create games that use DirectX, Unreal, and Cocos2d. Choose 'Linux development with C++' to target Linux platforms, including IoT development.The Installation details pane lists the included and optional components installed by each workload. You can select or deselect optional components in this list. For example, to support development by using the Visual Studio 2017 or 2015 compiler toolsets, choose the MSVC v141 or MSVC v140 optional components. You can add support for MFC, the experimental Modules language extension, IncrediBuild, and more.
- After you choose the workload(s) and optional components you want, choose Install.Next, status screens appear that show the progress of your Visual Studio installation.
Tip
At any time after installation, you can install workloads or components that you didn't install initially. If you have Visual Studio open, go to Tools > Get Tools and Features... which opens the Visual Studio Installer. Or, open Visual Studio Installer from the Start menu. From there, you can choose the workloads or components that you wish to install. Then, choose Modify.
Step 5 - Choose individual components (Optional)
If you don't want to use the Workloads feature to customize your Visual Studio installation, or you want to add more components than a workload installs, you can do so by installing or adding individual components from the Individual components tab. Choose what you want, and then follow the prompts.
Step 6 - Install language packs (Optional)
By default, the installer program tries to match the language of the operating system when it runs for the first time. To install Visual Studio in a language of your choosing, choose the Language packs tab from the Visual Studio Installer, and then follow the prompts.
Change the installer language from the command line
Another way that you can change the default language is by running the installer from the command line. For example, you can force the installer to run in English by using the following command:
vs_installer.exe --locale en-US
. The installer will remember this setting when it's run the next time. The installer supports the following language tokens: zh-cn, zh-tw, cs-cz, en-us, es-es, fr-fr, de-de, it-it, ja-jp, ko-kr, pl-pl, pt-br, ru-ru, and tr-tr.Step 7 - Change the installation location (Optional)
You can reduce the installation footprint of Visual Studio on your system drive. You can choose to move the download cache, shared components, SDKs, and tools to different drives, and keep Visual Studio on the drive that runs it the fastest.
Important
You can select a different drive only when you first install Visual Studio. If you've already installed it and want to change drives, you must uninstall Visual Studio and then reinstall it.
Step 8 - Start developing
- After Visual Studio installation is complete, choose the Launch button to get started developing with Visual Studio.
- On the start window, choose Create a new project.
- In the search box, enter the type of app you want to create to see a list of available templates. The list of templates depends on the workload(s) that you chose during installation. To see different templates, choose different workloads.You can also filter your search for a specific programming language by using the Language drop-down list. You can filter by using the Platform list and the Project type list, too.
- Visual Studio opens your new project, and you're ready to code!
Visual Studio 2017 Installation
In Visual Studio 2017, it's easy to choose and install just the features you need. And because of its reduced minimum footprint, it installs quickly and with less system impact.
Prerequisites
- A broadband internet connection. The Visual Studio installer can download several gigabytes of data.
- A computer that runs Microsoft Windows 7 or later versions. We recommend Windows 10 for the best development experience. Make sure that the latest updates are applied to your system before you install Visual Studio.
- Enough free disk space. Visual Studio requires at least 7 GB of disk space, and can take 50 GB or more if many common options are installed. We recommend you install it on your C: drive.
For details on the disk space and operating system requirements, see Visual Studio Product Family System Requirements. The installer reports how much disk space is required for the options you select.
Download and install
- Download the latest Visual Studio 2017 installer for Windows.TipThe Community edition is for individual developers, classroom learning, academic research, and open source development. For other uses, install Visual Studio 2017 Professional or Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise.
- Find the installer file you downloaded and run it. It may be displayed in your browser, or you may find it in your Downloads folder. The installer needs Administrator privileges to run. You may see a User Account Control dialog asking you to give permission to let the installer make changes to your system; choose Yes. If you're having trouble, find the downloaded file in File Explorer, right-click on the installer icon, and choose Run as Administrator from the context menu.
- The installer presents you with a list of workloads, which are groups of related options for specific development areas. Support for C++ is now part of optional workloads that aren't installed by default.For C++, select the Desktop development with C++ workload and then choose Install.
- When the installation completes, choose the Launch button to start Visual Studio.The first time you run Visual Studio, you're asked to sign in with a Microsoft Account. If you don't have one, you can create one for free. You must also choose a theme. Don't worry, you can change it later if you want to.It may take Visual Studio several minutes to get ready for use the first time you run it. Here's what it looks like in a quick time-lapse:Visual Studio starts much faster when you run it again.
- When Visual Studio opens, check to see if the flag icon in the title bar is highlighted:If it's highlighted, select it to open the Notifications window. If there are any updates available for Visual Studio, we recommend you install them now. Once the installation is complete, restart Visual Studio.
Visual Studio 2015 Installation
To install Visual Studio 2015, go to Download older versions of Visual Studio. Run the setup program and choose Custom installation and then choose the C++ component. To add C++ support to an existing Visual Studio 2015 installation, click on the Windows Start button and type Add Remove Programs. Open the program from the results list and then find your Visual Studio 2015 installation in the list of installed programs. Double-click it, then choose Modify and select the Visual C++ components to install.
In general, we highly recommend that you use Visual Studio 2017 even if you need to compile your code using the Visual Studio 2015 compiler. For more information, see Use native multi-targeting in Visual Studio to build old projects.
When Visual Studio is running, you're ready to continue to the next step.
Next Steps
-->Icons provide a visual shorthand for an action, concept, or product. By compressing meaning into a symbolic image, icons can cross language barriers and help conserve an extremely valuable resource: screen space.
Icons can appear in apps—and outside them:
Icons inside the app
Inside your app, you use icons to represent an action, such as copying text or navigating to the settings page.
Icons outside the app
Outside your app, Windows uses an icon to represent your app in the start menu and in the taskbar. If the user chooses to pin your app to the start menu, your app's start tile can feature your app's icon. Your app's icon appears in the title bar and you can choose to create a splash screen with your app's logo.
This article describes icons within your app. To learn about icons outside your app (app icons), see the app and tile icons article.
When to use icons
Icons can save space, but when should you use them?
Use an icon for actions, like cut, copy, paste, and save, or for navigation items in a navigation menu.
Use an icon if one already exists for the concept you want to represent. (To see whether an icon exists, check the Segoe icon list.)
Use an icon if it's easy for the user to understand what the icon means and it's simple enough to be clear at small sizes.
Don't use an icon if its meaning isn't clear, or if making it clear requires a complex shape.
Using the right type of icon
There are many ways to create an icon. You can use a symbol font like Segoe MDL2 Assets. You could create your own vector-based image. You can even use a bitmap image, although we don't recommend it. Here's a summary of the different ways you can add an icon to your app.
Use a predefined icon.
Microsoft provides over 1000 icons in the form of the Segoe MDL2 Assets font. It might not be intuitive to get an icon from a font, but our font display technology means these icons will look crisp and sharp on any display, at any resolution, and at any size. For instructions, see Segoe MDL2 icons.
Use a font.
You don't have to use the Segoe MDL2 Assets font--you can use any font the user has installed on their system, such as Wingdings or Webdings.
Use a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file.
SVG resources are ideal for icons, because they always look sharp at any size or resolution. Most drawing applications can export to SVG. For instructions, see SVGImageSource.
Use Geometry objects.
Like SVG files, geometries are a vector-based resource, so they always look sharp. However, creating a geometry is complicated because you have to individually specify each point and curve. It's really only a good choice if you need to modify the icon while your app is running (to animate it, for example). For instructions, see Move and draw commands for geometries.
C++ Add Icon To Exe
You can also use a bitmap image, such as PNG, GIF, or JPEG, although we don't recommend it.
Bitmap images are created at a specific size, so they have to be scaled up or down depending on how large you want the icon to be and the resolution of the screen. When the image is scaled down (shrunk), it can appear blurry; when it's scaled up, it can appear blocky and pixelated. If you have to use a bitmap image we recommend using a PNG or GIF over a JPEG.
Make the icon do something
Once you have an icon, the next step is to make it do something by associating it with command or a navigation action. The best way to do this is to add the icon to a button or a command bar.
Icon Files Exe
Create an icon button
You can put an icon in a standard button. Since you can use buttons in a wider variet of places, this gives you a little more flexibility for where your action icon appears.
The are a few ways to add an icon to a button:
Step 1
Set the button's font family to
Set the button's font family to
Segoe MDL2 Assets
and its content property to the unicode value of the glyph you want to use:Step 2
You can use one of the icon element objects: BitmapIcon,FontIcon,PathIcon, orSymbolIcon. This gives you more types of icons to choose from, and enables you to combine icons and other types of content, such as text, if you want:
You can use one of the icon element objects: BitmapIcon,FontIcon,PathIcon, orSymbolIcon. This gives you more types of icons to choose from, and enables you to combine icons and other types of content, such as text, if you want:
Create a series of icons in a command bar
When you have a series of commands that go together, such as cut/copy/paste or a set of drawing commands for a photo-editing program, put them together in a command bar. A command bar takes one or more app bar buttons or app bar toggle buttons, each of which represents an action. Each button has an Icon property you use to control which icon it displays. There are a variety of ways to specify the icon.
The easiest way is to use the list of predefined icons we provide—simply specify the icon name, such as 'Back' or 'Stop', and the system will draw it:
For the complete list of icon names, see the Symbol enumeration.
There are other ways to provide icons for a button in a command bar:
- FontIcon - the icon is based on a glyph from the specified font family.
- BitmapIcon - the icon is based on a bitmap image file with the specified Uri.
- PathIcon - the icon is based on Path data.
To learn more about command bars, see the command bar article.