Changing application icon for windows

By default, the exported game icon will be the Godot icon. Most likely you will want to change that for your game. There are two types of icons that can be changed: 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 game 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 game.

../../../_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: https://github.com/electron/rcedit/releases

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

For Linux users, you will also need to install wine in order to use rcedit. For more information, check https://www.winehq.org/

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

Now you have everything ready for changing the file icon. To do that, you will need to specify the icon when exporting. Go to Project>Export. Assuming you have a windows desktop preset ready, in the options, under Application, you will find Icon, select your desired image in ICO format as your file icon.

Note

To export an ICO image, you can use GIMP. For more details, please refer to this tutorial: http://skyboygames.com/easily-create-a-windows-app-icon-with-gimp/

See also

Check the documentation for more info about exporting.

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

Testing the result

You can now export the game and see whether you have change the icons successfully or not. If everything works fine, you will see this.

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

Icon (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 StackOverflow threads: one, two.

Your ICO file should at least contain icons in the following resolutions: 16x16, 48x48 and 256x256. They should also be uncompressed. The 256x256 icon can be compressed, but this breaks backwards compatibility with Windows XP.

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 255px. (I.e. 256 or 512 or 1024)

Note that for high-DPI compression may be used, also they should be using 24bpp mode in contrast to the lower resolutions.