Changing application icon for Windows

By default, the exported project’s icon will be the Godot icon. You will most likely want to change that for your project. There are two types of icons that can be changed on Windows: the file icon and the taskbar icon.

Changing the taskbar icon

The taskbar icon is the icon that shows up on the taskbar when your project is running.

../../../_images/icon_taskbar_icon.png

To change the taskbar icon, go to Project → Project Settings → Application → Config → Icon. Click on the folder icon and select your desired icon.

Note

This is also the icon that gets displayed in the Godot project list.

../../../_images/icon_project_settings.png

Changing the file icon

The file icon is the icon of the executable that you click on to start the project.

../../../_images/icon_file_icon.png

Before selecting it in the export options, you will need to install an extra tool called rcedit. You can download it here.

After downloading, you need to tell Godot the path to the rcedit executable on your computer. Go to Editor → Editor Settings → Export → Windows. Click on the folder icon for the rcedit entry. Navigate to and select the rcedit executable.

Note

Linux and macOS users will also need to install WINE to use rcedit.

../../../_images/icon_rcedit.png

You should now have everything in place to change the file icon. To do that, you will need to specify the icon when exporting. Go to Project → Export. Assuming you have already created a Windows Desktop preset, select your icon in ICO format in the Application → Icon field.

Note

You can use software such as GIMP to export an ICO image. For more information, please refer to this tutorial.

../../../_images/icon_export_settings.png

Testing the result

You can now export the project. If it worked correctly, you should see this:

../../../_images/icon_result.png

ICO file requirements

Regardless of which program you use to create your ICO file), there are some requirements to ensure the icon (and your executable) works on Windows.

This is a bit tricky, as can be seen in the following Stack Overflow threads: one, two.

Your ICO file should at least contain icons in the following resolutions: 16×16, 48×48 and 256×256.

If you want to fully support high-DPI screens, this is the full list of supported icon sizes on Windows 10: 16, 20, 24, 28, 30, 31, 32, 40, 42, 47, 48, 56, 60, 63, 84 and one larger than 255 pixels (such as 256, 512 or 1024).

It is also possible to convert a PNG image to an hiDPI-friendly ICO file using this ImageMagick command:

  1. magick convert icon.png -define icon:auto-resize=256,128,64,48,32,16 icon.ico