My Quick Fix

Problem

Yesterday I found out how to run Chrome in ‘Incognito Mode’ from a shortcut. However, now I have two identical ‘Chrome’ Icons in my Quicklaunch bar, and need a way to distinguish them.

Which ones the incognito link? New icon needed!

Problem

Solution

Make a modified Chrome icon! Here’s the one I made:

If you want THIS cheesy icon, click on the image to download it.

Using the Icon: Once you have another icon to use [or you have downloaded my one by clicking on the image above], here’s how to use it:

• Save the .ico file somewhere sensible. I put mine in the same directory as the chrome executable for tidiness. The paths to the XP and Vista install locations are listed below in the ‘Make your own icon’ section.
• Right click on your ‘incognito’ shortcut, select ‘Properties’, and click the ‘Shortcut’ tab. Then click the ‘Change Icon’ button shown below:

The Change Icon button is in the 'Shortcut' tab of 'Properties'

• In the ‘Change Icon’ window that pops up, browse to the .ico file you’ve saved.

Browse to the ico file, and click on your new icon

• Now just ‘Ok’, and ‘Ok’ again, and you should see your new icon showing on your shortcut.

Make your own icon: If you want to make your own version of the chrome icon, get yourself an icon editor which is capable of pulling icon data from exe/dll files. You’ll also want one that can handle transparency properly. I grabbed a 30 day trial copy of Axialis IconWorkshop. Once that (or another icon editor) is installed, you need to ‘open’ the icon from the chrome.exe file which resides here in XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\[your username here]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\Chrome.exe

and here in Vista:

C:\Users\[your username here]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

The icon editor should simply ‘pull’ the icon info from within the .exe file when you try and open it. You will notice that the .exe file contains 6 different versions of the icon: 16×16, 32×32 and 48×48 pixels with 256 colours and one ‘flat’ transparent background colour. And then 3 more in the same 3 sizes with Alpha transparency (256 levels of opacity, per colour, giving you nice smooth transparency).

Using the icon editor, edit as many versions as you need. For example, if you use XP, and have both a desktop icon and a quicklaunch icon, you will need to edit the 16×16+alpha version (for your quicklaunch shortcut) and the 32×32+alpha version for the desktop shortcut.

I found the easiest way to add the sungalsses to my icon was to ‘export’ the 6 icons from IconWorkshop as a PSD file, open them in Photoshop, do the work there, save them, then ‘import’ back into IconWorkshop.

That’s about it. All you then need to do it save the collection as one .ico file, and follow the instructions above in the ‘Using the icon’ section to use it.

Good luck! Any questions, comments or corrections – just post a comment below.