Extract .ico icon file from .exe with 7zip

SO-7zip-extract-icon

You can extract .ico icons from an exe with 7-zip!

how?

@tomcass240 To be honest, I don't remember posting this gist or what the context was. However, I believe you can open an exe as an archive with 7zip to find the icon file.

Thank you for posting this, I needed to get some icons for my new Streamdeck and after a lot of searching (and not wanting to install another application that needs admin rights) I finally found this.

For example here is the VS Code icon: C:\Users\{MY USERNAME}\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe\.rsrc\1033\ICON\2.ico There is also a file called 1 which seems to be a PNG according to the header.

Edit: Seems like the best way to get the best icon is to find the largest file. Numbering is unreliable, Windows Terminal for instance has 0 as its lowest resolution. Files without extensions seem to be PNGs. I think the PNGs should generally be the best resolution, in VS Code's case it's smaller than the largest icon, but I suspect that's because of better compression.

this was almost useful!

its useful, yall really need a tutorial to download 7zip and right click on an exe ,open archive and go to icons?
(use this as a tutorial 💀)

btw the files with out extensions in the end are png files

awesome info, thank you :)

Cool trick! thanks

You can do of course do this on the command line using 7z with e and the -o flag while telling it to extract only the .rsrc/ICON path ...

Example: I just used in order to get my WINEskin Bookworm Adventures shortcut to look proper :)
7z e -oBWA-Icons /Users/conny/Applications/Wineskin/Bookworm\ Adventures\ 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/prefix/drive_c/Bookworm\ Adventures\ Volume\ 2/BookwormAdventuresVol2.exe .rsrc/ICON

EDIT:

yes I am on macOS, using the Homebrew package p7zip ...

I was using p7zip but as @WinkelCode mentioned, the 7-zip dot org implementation is also available through the sevenzip(aliased as 7zip) package.

@cbrunnkvist FYI, 7zip has an official Linux/Mac CLI port. The Brew bottle is called sevenzip and the binary is called 7zz. I just tested it and it works the same way for extracting icons.

My understanding is that the official port (sevenzip/7zz) is the preferred program nowadays as it is actively maintained, which is important for stuff like security issues that crop up every now and then.

This is why I love the internet, thankyou kind strangers

Honorable Nomination at the most useless Gist Awards 2017

thanks!

oh my god...

I'm just...wow

had no f... idea 7zip could do this

You can do of course do this on the command line using 7z with e and the -o flag while telling it to extract only the .rsrc/ICON path ...

Example: I just used in order to get my WINEskin Bookworm Adventures shortcut to look proper :) 7z e -oBWA-Icons /Users/conny/Applications/Wineskin/Bookworm\ Adventures\ 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/prefix/drive_c/Bookworm\ Adventures\ Volume\ 2/BookwormAdventuresVol2.exe .rsrc/ICON

EDIT:

yes I am on macOS, using the Homebrew package p7zip ...

I was using p7zip but as @WinkelCode mentioned, the 7-zip dot org implementation is also available through the sevenzip(aliased as 7zip) package.

thanks worked

Windows GUI:

• Open 7zFM.
• Navigate to exe file and select it.
• Extract it
• Icon is in /.rsrc/ICON folder