Changing the application and taskbar icon - Python/Tkinter

Question

I've been working on a very simple python/tkinter script (a .pyw file) and I'd like to change it's application icon (the 'file' icon shown at the explorer window and the start/all programs window, for example - not the 'file type' icon nor the main window of the app icon) and the taskbar icon (the icon shown at the taskbar when the application is minimized). Is it possible to change them or is it something only doable when you effectively install an application through an .exe?

This little app is supposed to run on Windows XP / 7 machines only and it's in Python 2.7.3.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Another option on Windows would be the following:

To your python code add the following:

import ctypes

myappid = 'mycompany.myproduct.subproduct.version' # arbitrary string
ctypes.windll.shell32.SetCurrentProcessExplicitAppUserModelID(myappid)

Answer 2

Use

root.iconbitmap(default='ardulan.ico')

But the probleme is that it only replace the icon on the windows not on the taskbar. It's because the py file is executed from python interpreter so windows use his icon and not the tkinter icon.

You have to 'compile' it i think with py2exe, cx_Freeze, py2app ...

http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/CustomIcons

Answer 3

I have a music_app.py file and melody.ico file

With Tkinter you can use:

from tkinter import *
root = Tk()
root.title("melody")
root.iconbitmap(r"melody.ico")
root.mainloop()

With PyQT

from PyQt4 import QtGui
import sys

app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
Form = QtGui.QWidget()
Form.setWindowIcon(QtGui.QIcon('melody.ico'))
Form.setWindowTitle('melody')
Form.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())

After that you can convert music_app.py to .exe or not and the result remain the same:

Hope it help !!!

Answer 4

You can do that by creating a new shortcut to the python.exe or pythonw.exe file, (option available in Window's explorer right-click menu), then right click the shortcut, select properties, and change target to:

"C:\Path\to\Python.exe" "Absolute\or\relative\path\to\file.py"

Then select change icon (still in the properties window), and select your .ico file. Executing the program from this shortcut will automaticaly set the selected icon as taskbar and window icon.

Note though that by executing set shortcut, instead of clicking directly your .py file, the current working directory will be the one of python.exe , and not of your file, you can change that too in the shortcut's properties window, in the "start in" entry field (underneath target), or by using the python methods os.getcwd() to find the current working directory and os.chdir(path) to set it

Answer 5

Create an single file exe using PyInstaller and use Inno Setup to build the windows installer package. Inno Setup will do the icon stuff for you.

Answer 6

add --icon=iconname.ico
to the pyinstaller command in the prompt

eg>> pyinstaller --windowed --add-data "pics/myicon.ico;pics" --add-data "pics/*.png;pics" --icon=pics/myicon.ico -d bootloader myscript.py

this will show your icon on the windows taskbar instead of the default python pkg icon

Answer 7

For those arriving at this post looking for a more accurate and complete answer:

import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()

root.iconbitmap('/path/to/ico/icon.ico')
root.mainloop()

Source reference is delftstack.com