Changing icons in Notepad++

[Mark Olson]

As far as I know, there’s not a better way to do this. If there is, I’d love to hear about it!

EDIT: There is a better way, ignore my post and see Alan Kilborn’s below.

Suppose you want to change an icon in Notepad++. For instance, I like the pencil icon for files with unsaved changes, but I prefer using light mode, which uses a red floppy disk icon by default.

This requires you to install CFF Explorer, a free tool for inspecting portable executables. It has a lot of capabilities and I’m certainly only scratching the surface.

First, right click on the notepad++.exe executable and select Open with CFF Explorer.

You should see a window that looks like the image below (minus the circle). Click on Resource Editor.

Now click on the Icons tab in the dropdown menu and scroll down the list of icons until you see the icon you want to change.

Now right-click on the icon’s tab and click Replace Icon.

A file browser dialog will pop up, and you can select an icon file on your computer. If you want to use a different icon from Notepad++, you can select another icon from the icons list and select Save Icon.

Once you do this, go to the main menu and save notepad++.exe in another directory (you won’t be able to overwrite the exe directly). Then you can cut and paste the new executable and overwrite the original file.

Here’s before:

And after!

I know that this is about using a tool that’s not Notepad++, but it seems sufficiently relevant that I figured I’d post it here.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Mark-Olson

Can’t you simply do this?:

There really is absolutely zero reason, except the developers clinging ferociously to the past, for this to not be the default option, and for users to not tick the box for Alternate icons.

I say “zero reason” because, personal preferences aside, the ancient “diskette” icons don’t work right, like the alternate ones do.

But, I suppose your technique does show how to replace one icon and not the others, if that’s desirable. And I think your discussion is on-topic for Notepad++, so no worries there.

[Mark Olson]

@Alan-Kilborn
I figured there had to be a better way to do it! Thank you so much!

What version was that introduced in?

[Alan Kilborn]

@Mark-Olson said in Changing icons in Notepad++:

What version was that introduced in?

Appears to be v7.9.1.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Mark-Olson said in Changing icons in Notepad++:

EDIT: There is a better way, ignore my post and see Alan Kilborn’s below.

Hey! I think your post still has value, for other types of “hacking” of this sort. :-)

[PeterJones]

@Mark-Olson said in Changing icons in Notepad++:

EDIT: There is a better way, ignore my post and see Alan Kilborn’s below.

BTW: ++kudos++ for marking your edit, and for not making the rest of the conversation meaningless by deleting the old contents of the original post. :-)