The VideoLAN Forums

VLC is a wonderful piece of software, but I really get tired of looking at that traffic cone icon for my media files all the time. It might be an amusing inside joke for the developers, but for most of us traffic cones instinctively signify "under construction" "inconvenience" "detour" etc.

Since I work at the computer all day it's nice to have a visually appealing desktop... is there any way to replace the cone icon for media files with something else? Is there a gif or such in the installation directory that can be replaced? Would appreciate any help on this, thanks!

You can do it in the registry, I guess

And how exactly would I go about doing this, Jean-Baptiste Kempf?
For specificity's sake, I want to change the icon that the individual media files associated with VLC media player display in Windows Explorer.
Just in case it matters, I'm running 64-bit Windows 8.

Thank you,
Alex

P.S. I spent at least an hour searching through this forum/the internet/the VLC media player itself before posting this. Just sayin', I tried.

mpf » Tue May 08, 2012 12:20 pm

You can do it in the registry, I guess

I'd like to know how to do this, too.

I LOVE VLC and use it almost exclusively, but I find the product's branding and logo to be underwhelming and not representative of how truly amazing this software is (and by extension, how great the developers must be, and how awesome is the VLC community, too!).

While I'm not suggesting a cynical corporate-style rebranding for VLC (and the org, too), I would be willing to actually even make a contribution to the project if it went towards a new logo and identity NOT based on a traffic cone that is totally irrelevant to the experience of the vast majority of VLC user-base.

If absolutely crap software pumped out by megabucks corps and small firms and everyone in between can have slick, visually-appealing logos, why can't VLC?

@ aster, ahollifield, jdanek007 and others who may be interested:
These instructions are specific to Windows OSes and may vary depending on what version of Windows you're using:

1. Open the Explorer
2. In the menu, go to Tools > Folder Options > File Types [tab]
3. Find the file type that you want to make the changes to
4. Select it and press the Advanced button and a window will pop up
5. Click on the Change Icon button and browse for the icon (.ico) that you wish to use
6. Once you've selected one, press OK/Close on the remaining windows and the change will be made immediately

You'll have to do this for each file type that you want to change. Hope this helps. :]