If you’re a Windows user, it might be worth your time to change the default icon that is assigned for a text document or for all PDF documents, etc. This tip is really just for customizing the look and feel of Windows to your liking. ..

In Windows XP, changing a file type’s icon was very simple and could be done via Windows Explorer. Unfortunately, the process is more complicated in Windows 7 and Windows 8. There you have to manually edit registry entries, which is no fun. Thankfully, there are a couple of freeware programs out there that get the job done without all the mess. Windows XP users will remember how easy it was to change an icon for a file type - just right-click on the file and select ‘Properties’. In Windows 7 and 8, this process has become more complicated due to changes made to the registry. Two freeware programs - Icon Renamer (www.iconrenamer.com) and File Type Changer (www.filetypechanger.com) - can help make this process much easier by automatically editing the relevant registry entries for you. ..

Change File Type Icon in Windows XP

Step 2: Click the View tab and then select the Show Hidden Files and Folders option. Step 3: Click the OK button to close the Folder Options window. When you open your computer, go to Tools and then Folder Options. In the Folder Options window, click the View tab and then select the Show Hidden Files and Folders option. Click the OK button to close the Folder Options window. ..

Step 3: Click on the “Add” button and you’ll be able to add a new file type. Step 4: In the “File Name” field, enter a name for your new file type. Step 5: In the “Extension” field, enter the extension of your new file type. Step 6: Click on the “Create” button and your new file type will be created and added to your computer’s registered file types.

To change the icon for a file extension:

  1. Scroll down to the file extension you want to change the icon for and then select it in the list.
  2. After that, click on the Advanced button at the bottom of the dialog.
  3. In the Advanced tab, scroll down to the Icon section and select a new icon from the list. ..

Step 5: Click the Change Icon button at the top right and choose your new icon.

In Windows XP and Vista, you can change the icon for a file type by using the File Type Manager. In Windows 7 and Windows 8, you can do this by using the File Explorer.

Change File Type Icon in Windows 7/8

The first is IconMgr.exe, which can be found on the Windows 7 Start Menu. It’s a small program that you can run from the command line. After running IconMgr, you will be asked to select a file to change the icon for. You can either choose an existing file or create a new one and name it after yourself. After selecting the file, IconMgr will start changing the icons for it according to your chosen settings. The second is Folder Options. This program is located in the Control Panel under Programs and Features. Once you have opened Folder Options, you will need to click on the “Options” tab and then select “File Types” under “New/Open”. Under “New/Open”, you will need to select “Icon File (x86)” and then click on the OK button. After clicking on the OK button, Folder Options will close and your new icon setting will be applied.

Types

Type app is a simple program that lets you see all the file types on your computer. It would be nice if it was a standalone program, but unfortunately, it isn’t. Once you install it and run it, you’ll get a box with all of the currently registered file types on your system and their icons. ..

In the properties box, I changed the icon to a file browser.

If you want to open a TXT file in Notepad, you can choose the Notepad program as the default one on the Class tab. You can also change this if you want by using Explorer.

We are interested in the Icon file stored in the SYSTEM32 directory. By default, Icon shows you the icons stored in that file. This DLL file contains a lot of the default system icons used on the system.

If you want to create your own icons, you can extract icons from EXE and DLL files or take your own images and convert them into icons. Once you have a custom icon, you can click the little yellow folder button and browse to the icon you want to use.

To close out of the properties window, simply select the icon in the header area and click on it. ..

I made this change to help make TXT files more visible and easier to find.

FilesTypesMan

FileTypesMan is a great program that doesn’t require any installation on your system. It’s better than Types because it can identify different file types more accurately. ..

To find a file extension:

  1. In the File Explorer, open the folder where you want to look for a file.
  2. In the File Explorer, click on the “File Types” tab.
  3. In the “File Types” tab, under “Text Files (All Files)”, click on the “Extensions” button.
  4. In the “Extensions” window, under “Text Files (All Files)”, click on the extension you are looking for.
  5. If you are looking for a file with a specific file extension, in the first column of the “Extensions” window, under “Text Files (All Files)”, click on that extension and then in the second column of that window, under “Actions”, click on one of the actions listed below: -Open: This will open an instance of Microsoft Word or another word processing program that can be used to view or edit this type of file -Save As: This will save this type of file as a different type of file (.docx for example) -Copy: This will copy this type of file to another location ..

When you double-click on an entry in the list, a popup dialog will appear with a variety of properties and settings. ..

To change the default icon for a file extension, click on the little button next to Default Icon and choose your desired icon file. You can also configure a bunch of advanced options for showing/hiding different settings related to the file extension. If you work with a certain file type a lot and want a better icon than the default, these two programs are the best options. ..

That’s about it. If you have any questions or problems updating the icon for a file type, let us know in the comments. Enjoy! ..