How do I get a high resolution icon for a file?

Raymond Chen

Today’s Little Program obtains a high resolution icon for a file.

Start with our scratch program and make these changes. Remember, Little Programs do little or no error checking. This week’s smart pointer class is (rolls dice) _com_ptr_t!

...
#include <shlwapi.h>
#include <commoncontrols.h>
#include <comip.h>
#include <comdef.h>
_COM_SMARTPTR_TYPEDEF(IImageList, __uuidof(IImageList));
HICON g_hico;
HINSTANCE g_hinst;                          /* This application's HINSTANCE */
...
int GetIconIndex(PCTSTR pszFile)
{
  SHFILEINFO sfi;
  SHGetFileInfo(pszFile, 0, &sfi, sizeof(sfi), SHGFI_SYSICONINDEX);
  return sfi.iIcon;
}
HICON GetJumboIcon(int iImage)
{
  IImageListPtr spiml;
  SHGetImageList(SHIL_JUMBO, IID_PPV_ARGS(&spiml));
  HICON hico;
  spiml->GetIcon(iImage, ILD_TRANSPARENT, &hico);
  return hico;
}

The Get­Icon­Index function does nothing new. It simply retrieves the system image list icon index for a file’s icon.

The Get­Jumbo­Icon retrieves an icon by its system image list index. First, it asks SHGet­Image­List for the jumbo image list, then it asks the jumbo image list for the icon.

Now all we have to do is hook the functions up.

void
PaintContent(HWND hwnd, PAINTSTRUCT *pps)
{
  DrawIconEx(pps->hdc, 50, 50, g_hico,
             0, 0, 0, nullptr, DI_NORMAL);
}
    ...
    if (SUCCEEDED(CoInitialize(NULL))) {/* In case we use COM */
        g_hico = GetJumboIcon(GetIconIndex(lpCmdLine));
        ...
        DestroyIcon(g_hico);
        CoUninitialize();
    }
    ...

Run this program and pass the full path to a file on the command line. (No quotation marks, even if it contains spaces!) Result: A gigantic icon for the file appears.

Instead of converting the system imagelist index into an icon, we could just ask the jumbo imagelist to render it directly.

int g_iImage;
void
PaintContent(HWND hwnd, PAINTSTRUCT *pps)
{
  IImageListPtr spiml;
  SHGetImageList(SHIL_JUMBO, IID_PPV_ARGS(&spiml));
  IMAGELISTDRAWPARAMS ildp = { sizeof(ildp) };
  ildp.himl = IImageListToHIMAGELIST(spiml);
  ildp.i = g_iImage;
  ildp.hdcDst = pps->hdc;
  ildp.x = 50;
  ildp.y = 50;
  ildp.rgbBk = CLR_NONE;
  ildp.fStyle = ILD_TRANSPARENT;
  spiml->Draw(&ildp);
}
    ...
    if (SUCCEEDED(CoInitialize(NULL))) {/* In case we use COM */
        g_iImage = GetIconIndex(lpCmdLine);
        ...
        // no cleanup necessary
        CoUninitialize();
    }
    ...

This is how Explorer deals with icons most of the time. It doesn’t create actual icons; it merely remembers indices into the system imagelist, and when it needs to draw an icon, it calls the Draw method on the imagelist whose size corresponds to the image it wants.

Bonus chatter: The system imagelists come in four sizes (as of this writing). And yet large is one of the smallest available ones. Why is that?

The system imagelist sizes are

• Small
• Large
• Extra-Large
• Jumbo

The first two (small and large) were the only ones available in Windows 95. Windows XP added a size larger than large, which was named extra-large. And then Windows Vista added another size even larger than extra-large, which I named jumbo.

It’s an artifact of history that one of the smallest icon sizes has the name large. It was the largest icon size at the time, but things got even larger since then.

Raymond Chen

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