Which icon sizes should my Windows application s icon include

Question

I have a Windows application which will run in Windows XP and newer  i e  Vista 7   According to the Vista UI Guidelines  the standard sizes are 16x16  32x32  48x48  256x256  XP standard sizes do not include the 256x256 icon   In addition to those sizes  I also have 96x96 and 128x128  and could create more    Which of these icon sizes should I include  Will the shell actually use the  non-standard  sizes  or will I simply bloat my application

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Updated answer for Windows 8 10   View full list of guidelines and sizes here  in new Windows design guidelines  https   msdn microsoft com en-us windows uwp controls-and-patterns tiles-and-notifications-app-assets asset-types  Still include  ICO file with these sizes to support legacy experiences    16x16 24x24  32x32  48x48  256x256

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I took some time to check it in detail  I created an icon whose images have sizes of 16  24  32  40  48  64  96  128 and 256  Then I checked which image is shown  All these were done with normal 96dpi  If using a larger DPI  the larger sizes may be used  only checked this a bit in Windows 7   The results  Windows XP   Explorer views   Details   List  16 Icons  32 Tiles   Thumbnails  48   Right-click- gt Properties   choosing a new icon  32 Quickstart area  16 Desktop  32  Windows 7   Explorer views   Details   List   Small symbols  16 All other options  256  resized  if necessary    Right-click- gt Properties   choosing a new icon  32 Pinned to taskbar  32  Right-click-menu  16   Desktop   Small symbols  32 Medium symbols  48 Large symbols  256  resized  if necessary  Zooming using Ctrl Mouse wheel  16  32  48  256    Windows Runtime   from here   Main tile  150x150  310x150  wide version  Small logo  30x30 Badge  for lockscreen   24x24  monochromatic Splashscreen  620x300 Store  50x50  So the result  Windows XP uses 16  32  48-size icons  while Windows 7  and presumably also Vista  also uses 256-size icons  All other intermediate icon sizes are ignored  they may be used in some area which I didn t check    I also checked in Windows 7 what happens if icon sizes are missing  The missing sizes are generated  obviously   With sizes of 16  32  and 48  if one is missing  downscaling is preferred  So if we have icons with size 16 and 48  the 32 icon is created from the 48 icon  The 256 icon is only used for these if no other sizes are available  So if the icons are size 16 and 256  the other sizes are upscaled from the 16 icon  Additionally  if the 256 icon is not there  the  possibly generated  48 icon is used  but not resized anymore  So we have a  possibly large  empty area with the 48 icon in the middle  Note that the default desktop icon size in XP was 32x32  while in Windows 7 it is 48x48  As a consequence  for Windows 7 it is relatively important to have a 48 icon  Otherwise  it is upscaled from a smaller icon  which may look quite ugly   Just a note about Windows XP compatibility  If you reuse the icon as window icon  then note that this can crash your application if you use a compressed 256 icon  The solution is to either not compress the icon or create a second version without the  compressed  256 icon  See here for more info

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Not 96x96  use 64x64 instead  I usually use    16 - status titlebar button 32 - desktop icon 48 - folder view 64 128 - Additional sizes   256 works as well on XP  however  old resource compilers sometimes complained about  out of memory  errors

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The Microsoft UX icon guideline says        Application icons and Control Panel items  The full set includes 16x16  32x32  48x48  and 256x256  code scales between 32 and 256      To me this implies  but does not explicitly state  unfortunately  that you should supply those 4 sizes    Additional details regarding color formats  which you may also find useful          Icon files require 8-bit and 4-bit palette versions as well  to support the default setting in a remote desktop      Only a 32-bit copy of the 256x256 pixel image should be included  and only the 256x256 pixel image should be compressed  as PNG  to keep the file size down

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After some testing with an icon with 8  16  20  24  32  40  48  64  96  128 and 256 pixels  256 in PNG  in Windows 7    At 100  resolution  Explorer uses 16  40  48  and 256  Windows Photo Viewer uses 96  Paint uses 256  At 125  resolution  Explorer uses 20  40  and 256  Windows Photo Viewer uses 96  Paint uses 256  At 150  resolution  Explorer uses 24  48  and 256  Windows Photo Viewer uses 96  Paint uses 256  At 200  resolution  Explorer uses 40  64  96  and 256  Windows Photo Viewer uses 128  Paint uses 256    So 8  32 were never used  it s strange to me for 32  and 128 only by Windows Photo Viewer with a very high dpi screen  i e  almot never used   It means your icon should at least provide 16  48 and 256 for Windows 7  For supporting newer screens with high resolutions  you should provide 16  20  24  40  48  64  96  and 256  For Windows 7  all pictures can be compressed using PNG but for backward compatibility with Windows XP  16 to 48 should not be compressed

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From Microsoft MSDN recommendations      Application icons and Control Panel items  The full set includes 16x16  32x32  48x48  and 256x256  code scales between 32 and 256   The  ico file format is required  For Classic Mode  the full set is 16x16  24x24  32x32  48x48 and 64x64    So we have already standard recommended sizes of    16 x 16  24 x 24  32 x 32  48 x 48  64 x 64  256 x 256    If we would like to support high DPI settings  the complete list will include the following sizes as well    20 x 20  30 x 30  36 x 36  40 x 40  60 x 60  72 x 72  80 x 80  96 x 96  128 x 128  320 x 320  384 x 384  512 x 512

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In the case of Windows 10 this is not exactly accurate  in fact none of the answers on stackoverflow was  I found this out when I tried to use pixel art as an icon and it got rescaled when it was not supposed to it was easy to see in this case cause of the interpolation and smoothing windows does  even thou I used the sizes from this post     So I made an app and did the work on all DPI settings  see it here  Windows 10 all icon resolutions on all DPI settings You can also use my app to create icons  also with nearest neighbor interpolation with smoothing off  which is not done with any of the bad editors I have seen   If you only want the resolutions  16  20  24  28  30  31  32  40  42  47  48  56  60  63  84  256 and you should use all PNG icons and anything you put in beside these it won t be displayed  See my post why

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TL DR  In Visual Studio 2019  when you add an Icon resource to a Win32  desktop  application you get an auto-generated icon file that has the formats below  I assume that the  1 developer tool for Windows does this right  Thus  a Windows compatible should have the following formats    Resolution   Color depth   Format     ----------- ------------   ------     256x256           32-bit    PNG       64x64             32-bit    BMP       48x48             32-bit    BMP       32x32             32-bit    BMP       16x16             32-bit    BMP       48x48              8-bit    BMP       32x32              8-bit    BMP       16x16              8-bit    BMP

[windows] Which icon sizes should my Windows application's icon include?

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