Windows – What Determines the Icon for Entries in the New Context Menu?

context menuiconswindowswindows 10windows-registry

I'm not entirely sure how this works. So I can add items to the "new" context menu (that appears when right clicking or pressing the menu button) through the registry editor. For example, if I want to create a new .cpp file entry, I can import a .reg file that looks like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cpp]
@="cpp"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cpp\ShellNew]
"NullFile"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\cpp]
@="C++ File"

So I can set the extension and the description that appears for it using this method. However, I'm not sure how the icon that appears next to my description is decided. This is what I mean:

enter image description here

I'm not sure if Windows chooses this picture automatically based upon whatever program I have set as the default for that extension or if it can be set manually in the registry somehow.

Can this icon be set manually?

Best Answer

By default, Explorer will use the icon set by the file type, but this can be overriden by placing an IconPath value in the ShellNew key. I figured this out by using Process Monitor to watch for Registry activity from explorer.exe.

It looks like Windows's existing entries use the REG_EXPAND_SZ data type, but REG_SZ works equally well and is much easier to include in a REG file. The format is the full path to the file containing the icon, then a comma, then the number of the icon resource within the file. In this screenshot, I used %ProgramFiles%\Windows Mail\wab.exe,10:

ShellNew entries

As you can see, this doesn't affect the file's icon outside of the New list:

the file's icon is different from the New icon

To include that change in your REG file, add this line right under the "NullFile"="" one:

"IconPath"="%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Mail\\wab.exe,10"

You will need to restart Explorer for the change to take effect.

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