icon (disk) on non active tab

[GianBattista Passoni]

After changing content of current displayed text, the icon (disk) on tab change color from blue to red telling this file is changed. Moving to a different file a new tab is activated, the old one is disactivated and its icon (disk) color becomes a kind of dark blue, to close to other unchanged files color icon.
Is it possible to change the icon to better mark the changed file for non active tabs?

[Alan Kilborn]

@GianBattista-Passoni

Yea, it is rather bad, isn’t it.
Who even knows what a floppy disk is anymore?

There’s a ticket for changing the tab bar icons, here:
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/8068
But AFAICT there’s not been action on it.
It appears to propose a shape+color approach, instead of just the current color change approach for the various file types (normal, readonly, edited, monitored).

There’s a hint in that ticket about using something called Resource Hacker to improve the situation, maybe I’ll look into that and post back here, as I would like to have better tab icons myself.

[Alan Kilborn]

So, here’s a procedure for “hacking” Notepad++ in order to get better-looking and easier-to-differentiate tab bar icons.

First, get what is needed, and put everything together in a temporary folder somewhere:

• Obtain “Resource Hacker” from http://angusj.com/resourcehacker/
  I chose the ZIP install, but whatever your pleasure.
  Really what you need in this step is ResourceHacker.exe

• Get some replacement icons, by downloading:
  http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/famfamfam_silk_icons_v013.zip
  Extract these files only: accept.png, lock.png, pencil.png

• Use an online conversion tool to convert all 3 of the .png files to .ico files
  One that I found simple to use was: https://icoconvert.com/
  Name the resulting .ico files this way: accept.ico, lock.ico, pencil.ico

• Also add to this collection of files a copy of your usual notepad++.exe file.

Next, and also in the same folder, create hack_npp_icons.txt with the following content:

[FILENAMES]
Open=notepad++.exe
Save=notepad++_hacked_icons.exe
Log=con

[COMMANDS]
-modify accept.ico,ICONGROUP,501,1033
-modify pencil.ico,ICONGROUP,502,1033
-modify lock.ico,ICONGROUP,503,1033

Now, obtain a CMD.exe window in your temporary folder (not going to do a lot of hand-holding here) and run the following command:

ResourceHacker.exe -script hack_npp_icons.txt

If all goes well, you should end up with no error messages and a new file called notepad++_hacked_icons.exe in your folder.

Copy the hacked exe back to the folder you copied your original notepad++.exe from.

Now test-run the hacked exe (after closing any running instance of N++ of course).

It should start and any tabs on the tab bar should now have the alternative icons:

• A “pencil” icon for modified but unsaved files:
  

• A “green checkbutton” icon for saved files:
  

• A “lock” icon for readonly files: