If you want to create an Windows 7 Compliant ‘Application Icon’, to be used as a short-cut, a file type, or embedded in an executable file, it must contain the minimum following icon sizes: Standard Windows Icon Size for ICO format Standard Windows Icon Sizes shown in Axialis Icon Workshop This is in some way brought about by the flexibility of the ICO format and its ability to ‘contain’ many image sizes and colour depths but is also not helped by Microsoft’s own quite poor documentation on Windows Icon Size, see here. There is sometimes a little confusion over the different sizes required to create a Windows 7 Application Icon file. Though I really don't think this is worth the effort.A Quick & Easy guide to Microsoft Windows Icon Size If you want to cover every possible resolution, include icons sizes 16, 17, 18. If you want to cover all the standard resolutions, include the additional icon sizes 20, 24, 40, 60, and 72. ConclusionsĪ windows application should include the standard icon sizes 16, 32, 48 and 256. For example, at the very unrealistic screen resolutions of 143% and 271%, the desktop shortcut icon sizes are 69 and 130, respectively. Selecting non-standard screen resolutions will change the icon sizes used by Windows. If the icon size is not available, Windows will pick the next closest image and resize as necessary. The icons are square, so a size of 32 is actually 32x32. The icon sizes used by Windows in these situations at the standard resolutions are as follows. Within Windows explorer, different icons may be required depending on the view mode: Form control (upper left corner of the application window).Windows uses application icons in a variety of situations: For example, the 30x30 and 48x48 icon images are: The IconSizes_101_Source.zip download includes the source for the IconSizes application, the 249 images used in the icon file, and the source for the BitmapsGen application used to generated the images.Ĭopy the IconSizes.exe file to any folder on your PC and see what icons are used by Windows. The IconSizes_101_App.zip download includes just the IconSizes.exe application. It includes an icon file with 249 images of every size from 8x8 to 256x256. To answer these questions, I wrote the IconSizes application. Does Windows use the same icon sizes with resizing, or are alternate sizes preferred? The information was readily available via a number of sources, for example this posting on StackOverflow ( ).īut I also wondered about the icon sizes used at different DPI Settings. Resized icons tend to be fuzzier and less sharp looking than unresized icons. We wanted the icons to be displayed without resizing. While working on a Windows application recently, the question arose as to what size icons should be included with the application. Download IconSizes_101_App.zip - 337.4 KB.Download IconSizes_101_Source.zip - 503.6 KB.

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