Changing Chrome icon on the tile

Question

The google chrome tile on my windows 10 start menu can't be changed. It has a dark grey box surrounding it (shown in image when it's suppose to be blue[due to theme]).

Re sizing the tile would make icon disappear.

What I have done so far is that i changed the icon of shortcut in the ...\ProgramFiles(x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe to the golden Chrome icon. This makes icons on the program list of start menu and the one in taskbar to change, EXCEPT for the one in start menu (as a tile shown in image above/ screenshot).

Reinstalling and reformatting does not solve this issue. I installed minimum programs like winrar and advanced system care but I don't think they are the cause. How can I change the Chrome icon on the tile?

Answer 1

The suggested answer didn't work for me. However I found a solution which worked for me in combination with the above answer.

1. Rename or delete the 'chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml' file located in the "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Google\Chrome\Application" folder (I would recommend renaming it as 'chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml-bk')
2. Right click on the Start Menu tile select 'More' and select 'Open File Location'. This takes you to the location of the Chrome shortcut. You can also get to it through "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Google Chrome"
3. Right click on the Google Chrome Shortcut and open Properties
4. Click on the Shortcut Tab and Click on Change Icon
5. If you get an error message "Windows can't find the file "%ProgramFiles%\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe", click ok and change the text in the Look for icons in this file: section to "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" (without quotes) and hit enter (not Browse)
6. Now you can select the icon and click 'ok' on both windows. If you fancy you can also select the Gold Chrome icon. You may have to provide Administrator permissions to change this.

credits - http://www.howtogeek.com/56194/how-to-enable-google-chromes-secret-gold-icon/

Answer 2

Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application, there's a file called visualelementsmanifest.xml, delete it. Then unpin and repin Chrome to start menu. That should do the trick. An alternative is changing the shortcut's icon and back to it's original, which ever way floats your boat

Answer 3

How to create custom apps from websites with Google Chrome (or any .exe file) and pin them with a custom icon or image in the start menu (Windows 10)

Hi to all,

Open Google Chrome and go to your prefered website.

Open the three dot menu and select "Add to desktop".This will create a chrome app.

You can access it via the apps shortcut in bookmarks bar.Set it to open as window and create a shortcut in start menu.

This will create a folder in your start menu 'Chrome Apps'.

Open it, right click on any app and select open file location.

It will probably be something like C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Chrome Apps.

Leave this folder minimized and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application.

In that folder copy and paste chrome.exe file and rename it to you app name (e.g Gooogle Drive to have googledrive.exe).

Open a new text document on your desktop (only) and paste this code:

     Application xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
      <VisualElements
      BackgroundColor="#1d1d1d"
      ShowNameOnSquare150x150Logo="on"
      ForegroundText="light"
      Square150x150Logo="appname.png"
      Square70x70Logo="appname.png"/>
      </Application>

Edit the code so it matches your standards.In the example,the background color (you can find the corresponding hex values on the web) is black and the foreground color is white.

To change the foreground value write dark inside the quotes or if you prefer a custom image 1024x1024 (prefer square images and be careful not to exceed 200 kb,or the image might not show at all).

Save the changes and rename the file to appname.VisualElementsManifest.xml e.g googledrive.VisualElementsManifest.xml.

Copy the file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application .

Put a copy of your image or icon in the same folder and rename it to appname.png (e.g googledrive.png).

Unminimize the other folder and right click on you app shortcut.

Select properties and in the Target replace chrome.exe in the path with googledrive.exe in this case.

Apply and close the properties window.

The final step is to rename the shortcut and pin it to the start menu and voila,you have a fully customized app tile.

(It's important to rename the shortcut or else the tile won't refresh the image/icon).

If you like you can change the icons/images of any application you have installed.Just right click the app-open file location-open file location until you meet the original .exe file,like the example before,except that you don't have to copy and paste the .exe file. Simply create the .xml file and edit it. Rename the shortcut and pin it to start.

P.S Sorry for my bad language if i made any mistakes,hope i helped and enjoy your new start menu!!!

I have also added a screenshot to see the changes. screen

A nice app is Windows Tile Color Changer if you just want to change the background color of your installed apps.Thanks for reading!

Answer 4

I have found a fix: If Chrome is still there, remove at the Start Menu and

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

You can see google chrome.exe. Just delete that and go to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application

and chrome right click and send shortcut to Desktop. Turn desktop and right click Chrome → Properties – change icon and select firs. Now chrome right click → cut and go to: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs right click → paste. You can try now add Start Menu. I did it just like that.

Answer 5

The problem for me was that the shortcut was looking for the icon in Program Files instead of Program Files (x86). I fixed that as follows:

1. Right-click Google Chrome's blacked-out tile in the Windows 10 Start Menu.
2. Select More, then Open file location.
3. Right-click the Google Chrome shortcut there and select Properties.
4. In the shortcut tab, select Change icon.
5. In the browse field, insert (x86) after ProgramFiles without any spaces.
6. Select Okay, then Okay.

The icon should then appear properly as the tile.

Answer 6

The accepted answer no longer works for me on Windows 10 Creators Update, so I came up with the AutoHotKey solution:
1. Create a .ahk script with

Run, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

and save it as Chrome.ahk.
2. Launch "C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\Compiler\Ahk2Exe.exe", set the Source to the above ahk file, set the custom icon to a desired .ico file, then click Convert.
3. Pin the generated .exe file to Start.

Note that the pinned tile doesn't have Chrome tasks (New Window etc.).

Answer 7

You can easily change the background color of the icon in the chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml file located in the same folder of your chrome.exe file.

Edit the BackgroundColor='#212121' line with the color you want. To use the same color of the other icons you can just set BackgroundColor='#0078D7'.

You can also edit this file to set the logocanary.png and smalllogocanary.png icons.

Answer 8

Here is what worked for me:

1. Run notepad.exe as administrator (otherwise, Notepad won't elevate when you try to modify a file in the protected Program Files folder tree).
2. Open C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml
3. Remove the BackgroundColor line, but be sure to bring the /> from the end of it up to the end of the previous line. You should see something like this when done:

   <Application xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'>
     <VisualElements
         ShowNameOnSquare150x150Logo='on'
         Square150x150Logo='67.0.3396.87\VisualElements\Logo.png'
         Square70x70Logo='67.0.3396.87\VisualElements\SmallLogo.png'
         Square44x44Logo='67.0.3396.87\VisualElements\SmallLogo.png'
         ForegroundText='light'/>
   </Application>
   

4. Save the file and exit Notepad.
5. Move the Chrome shortcut from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs to your desktop.
6. Change the shortcut's icon to something other than what it currently is.*
7. Move the shortcut back to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.
8. Open the Start Menu and verify that it now has the same background color as other icons.

9. Change the shortcut's icon back to whatever you want it to be.

   

_{*(I used an icon not in the manifest, the white square with 9 colored squares in it, as my temporary icon choice. I don't know if this was a factor, but if this doesn't work for you and you're using an icon that is in the manifest, then try this.)}