Where does Windows get the task bar icon?

BendikAnthonsen

Hi,
Most of my application icons are on the blue/green scale, and the red Vivaldi icon sticks out in an ugly way. So, I made a blue version. This looks great in my quick launch, as you can see on the left in this picture:

However, as you can see on the right, once the application is started, the red icon is placed on the task bar button. I have made a .ico file with the different size icons, then used Resource Hacker to replace the icons in vivaldi.exe as shown here:

I have deleted "Vivaldi Profile.ico" from all the locations where I could find it. I have cleared the windows 10 icon cache by deleting the IconCache.db file and rebooting. Still, I get the red icon on my taskbar button. Where is Vivaldi fetching this icon?

Oh, and before you ask:

No, it's not Vista, its's Windows 10 made to look like Vista
Yes, I'm old.
No, I will not consider pinning programs to the task bar.

Thank you for any tips and pointers!

Pathduck

@bendikanthonsen Try with vivaldi.dll instead

Ed: Actually you need to change both, the EXE icon is used for shortcuts.

Catweazle

@bendikanthonsen , the Vivaldi logo in blue looks nice.
Regarding the other, of course everyone can configure the UI as they want the most and it is useful to them, I think because of this you use Vivaldi.
However, personally I do not want to have icons on the desktop, because I consider it impractical, especially when there are several open windows that cover them, apart in the Taskbar, I can launch the apps with Win + number of the icon in the taskbar
The alternative can be a Launchbar, which you can put wherever you want in the Desktop, if you don't want apps in the Taskbar.
In your Taskbar, Vivaldi starts with Win+2, f.Exmpl.

BendikAnthonsen

@pathduck Excellent - thanks a million!

Now I just need to write a script to automate the process for when the next release comes out and replaces the .exe and .dll files

BendikAnthonsen

@catweazle Thank you for the suggestion, but I don't think you understand my setup. I don't have icons on the desktop either, what you see to the left in my screenshot is the Quick Launch Toolbar. This is a launch bar like you mention, with shortcuts that start programs. It is separate from the task bar.

Win+2 in my case does not start Vivaldi, rather it activates the second button on the task bar which here is a notepad-window. Anyhow, I was able to achieve my goal by modifying vivaldi.dll as I wrote in my answer to @Pathduck .