XYplorer Beta Club

Are there any themes or skins available for XYplorer? I would at least like to change the folder icon from the old Windows 98 yellow style to one of my liking. Is this possible? Thanks!

Deadhead wrote:Are there any themes or skins available for XYplorer? I would at least like to change the folder icon from the old Windows 98 yellow style to one of my liking. Is this possible? Thanks!

Hi and welcome to the XY forums!

There are no XY themes or skins available, mostly because (AFAIK) Don doesn't believe in them...his attitude is that XY has "his" look and that's part of the appeal, which I agree with...If you change the entire OS theme as to colors, it should apply to XY and work but no guarantees..see http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3462 for example.

As to folder icons variants, I think there may be other software appl's specifically for that purpose but I found one thread here reporting a problem because it required read-only status on folder to work.

it required read-only status on folder to work

I'm not sure what Microsoft's thinking is on this J_C. I changed the generic folder icons in Windows 7. Now when I call up any folder's properties it reads "Attributes: Read-only (Only applies to files in folder)" but it doesn't actually affect the attributes of files. They are not set to read-only (but can be if you want). Similarly with individually customized folders. I have been using this set up for months without any problems.

Hi Deadhead

XYplorer doesn't make changes to the registry. Changing the file or folder item icons within a file manager doesn't make them show up in open or save dialogs, for example.

To change generic folder icons globally:
You can use Icon Phile. It's no longer developed but is free and still works on Win 7. Available here:
http://www.freeware-guide.com/OldGoodFr ... Phile.html

IconPackager is more feature rich but not free.
http://www.stardock.com/products/iconpackager/

To change the icons of specific folders:
You can right-click a folder > Properties > Customize > Change Icon

A good shell extension to simplify this a bit is available in Lopesoft's FileMenu Tools
http://www.lopesoft.com/en/fmtools/info.html

Note: customizing the icon of a specific folder places a hidden file desktop.ini in the folder.

Below is an example of custom folder icons (generic and folder-specific) viewed with XYplorer.

FeatureCreep wrote:To change generic folder icons globally:
You can use Icon Phile. It's no longer developed but is free and still works on Win 7. Available here:
http://www.freeware-guide.com/OldGoodFr ... Phile.html

i can only wonder where you find this cool apps, but it's one more time i found your links very useful. this little app is quite astonishing. too bad it doesn't develop any more.

i can only wonder where you find this cool apps, but it's one more time i found your links very useful. this little app is quite astonishing. too bad it doesn't develop any more.

Hi, eil. Thanks for the compliment. Icon Phile occasionally has some minor glitches but it still works on Win7. For converting PNGs to ICOs I use Icon Sushi http://www.towofu.net/soft/e-aicon.php rather than the more popular IcoFX.

Hint: Avoid saving ICO files with PNG compression (a variant introduced with Vista and an option in Icon Sushi). XYplorer displays ICO files with PNG compression correctly on the List pane (in Details, Details with Thumbnails, List, Small and Large Icons views); on the Properties tab (icon preview) and when used on the XYplorer toolbar but shows a blank thumbnail in the List pane in Thumbnails view and on the Preview tab.

I was going to post this as a bug but then I noticed that some well known image viewers don't support these type of ICO files either. Also, reducing the file size of these already small files is probably not worth it, if the system has to use more resources to decompress them before populating a tree or list view.

For creating the PNG files I recommend Photoshop or (the free) GIMP. If you're going to create your own set of folder icons I think using a generic folder as a canvas for overlayed images (like the tongue or traffic cone above) works best. Keep these as separate layers in the PSD file (one file for each icon size 16, 32, etc...) then copy and merge layers to create different icon versions. Use a script to to save multiple layers as individual PNG files. You might have to download this for earlier versions of Photoshop but in CS4 Extended it is available via the menu File > Scripts > Export Layers to File...

Note: Windows won't show folder thumbnails with sample previews of images within a folder with a custom icon (this only applies to folders with specific icons not changing the generic folder icon).

Note: The above snapshot of XYplorer's list pane had the following two tweaks applied
ThumbSizes=16,24,32,48,64,96,128,180,256
ColumnWidthMin=32

Are there any themes or skins available for XYplorer?

I'm not interested in skins as such but I think Portable Icons would be a logical extension to Portable File Associations. You can choose which icon appears for a given extension in the Open with... menu but not what icons appear in the list or tree. But I suspect that in terms of Don's roadmap it would be near the end of a back alley, off of cul-de-sac, closed for road maintenance.

If you like the folder icons shown above I intend to include some in the next issue of toolbar buttons. But I will host them somewhere like Deviantart and link back to XYplorer.com from there. Watch this space.

@FeatureCreep thanks for the hint =i used to change icons to my liking for a long time(so did know most of your other advices), but as compress png in icons appeared comparably not so long ago, i was looking "suspiciously" towards those and tried to avoid.
yet, can you please mention what minor bugs of Icon Phile you do know?

The main reason I liked Icon Phile was the ability to save and restore sets of icons in one go (like IconPackager -not free) but I haven't done that since using XP.
But I now get the following error message when launching the app on Win7 64bit:

" is not a valid integer value

After dismissing it Icon Phile is open but minimized to the taskbar but seems to work OK. I just remember it being buggy and crashing occasionally but it didn't do anything adverse to the registry. It's a while since I last used it so I can't be more specific. As we're dealing with registry changes, I feel more confident recommending Icon Phile for XP than Win7.

I should have mentioned FileTypesMan by NirSoft (also portable and free). Double click an extension's entry to edit icon associations one by one, as well as other fields like Perceived and MIME type. You can Google Nir Sofir. His apps are well known to IT professionals and are mentioned in many tech blogs. I have no hesitation in recommending any of them.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/file_types_manager.html
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/index.html

Two other apps which I haven't tried but may interest you are.
Assox http://sites.google.com/site/assoxhome/
and
eXpresso http://gluxon.com/apps/eXpresso
http://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/28/associ ... lications/

Both are intended for USB use and temporarily change all your associations in one go, then restore them when you have finished your session.

If you do try either of them, let me know how you get on.

i can only wonder where you find this cool apps

General
http://lifehacker.com/
http://www.addictivetips.com/
http://www.ghacks.net/
http://www.howtogeek.com/
http://sourceforge.net/search/
http://www.techsupportalert.com/
http://www.shellcity.net/
http://www.donationcoder.com
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/

Portable
http://www.portablefreeware.com/
http://portableapps.com/
http://www.pendriveapps.com/
http://www.winpenpack.com/en/news.php
http://www.liberkey.com/en/catalog/index.html

Last free version
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/

Not sure if I should have posted that last one as there's a last free version of certain excellent file manager in there.

Excellent links!

I found a another way to customize:
http://browse.deviantart.com/customizat ... &q=patcher

I'm currently using Tango Patcher and XYplorer looks pretty good.

Deadhead wrote:Excellent links!

I found a another way to customize:
http://browse.deviantart.com/customizat ... &q=patcher

I'm currently using Tango Patcher and XYplorer looks pretty good.

Yeah, I quite like the Tango icons as well. But we should point out for some readers of the forum who may not know: Tango Patcher (and tweaks like it) alters system files not just the registry. You can still download and use most of the Tango set with less invasive methods.

More links:
Customization
http://www.wincustomize.com/
http://www.winmatrix.com/
Icons
http://www.iconarchive.com/
http://www.iconfinder.com/

FeatureCreep, how did you managed to show changed generic folder icons (the purple ones) in xyplorer? I've changed mines and they are showned correctly in windows explorer. But in xyplorer I still see the generic yellow ones !
What version of xyplorer do you have and what os?

I've also tried clean install but I still see yellow folder icons.

Here's the comparison of what I get in xyplorer and what in windows explorer:

Hi chavlji,

I got the same result initially as you. Custom folder icons showed up in Windows Explorer (and a couple of other file managers) but not in XYplorer. However, there is more than one place in the registry where the folder icon is assigned.

Try FileTypesMan (see above) and look for "Directory" as well as "Folder." I did not add any keys only edited existing ones (with FileTypesMan not Regedit) but I can't remember which one did the trick.

Did a quick search. These are the keys on my Win7 64bit system that reference custom folder icons:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\DefaultIcon
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\DefaultIcon
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Icons
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the tip, mate!

But it didn't worked... I've changed all the keys and still nothing. I've even searched the whole registry for "%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll," and there is no more entry pointing to folder icon.

And Xyplorer is still displaying the ugly yellow icons.

chavlji wrote:Thanks for the tip, mate!

But it didn't worked... I've changed all the keys and still nothing. I've even searched the whole registry for "%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll," and there is no more entry pointing to folder icon.

And Xyplorer is still displaying the ugly yellow icons.

I had the same thing. That's why I am using one of the patchers found at deviantART - http://browse.deviantart.com/customizat ... &q=patcher

So far, so good. They look great now.

I'd rather avoid such aggressive approaches...