How to create Custom Taskbar Icons

Well here comes the most awaited tutorial on how to create your own Custom Taskbar Icons. Getting rid of the old simple and boring white taskbars icons on your windows mobile device is not a tough task and you do not require to be an expert to do it. How to Edit and Customize a DLL and MUI has already been discussed and this is just an extension to it.

Here are the Possible files you need to edit to complete the Taskbar Icon set:

Here are the tools that you need:

• RecMod Tool – To convert a module to a flat DLL or MUI file
• UnSigner – To UnSign the DLL or MUI file
• Resource Compiler/Decompiler – To edit the DLL or MUI components
• Icon Maker – To create and edit icons
• Signer – To ReSign the DLL or MUI files

You can download these Free Tools from HERE. You can have some icons even placed in the MUI files so same procedure will be applied to MUI and for the DLL files. Here an taking an example of a DLL file. Once you are ready with these tools you can proceed to the following steps:

1. Get the DLL file you want to edit

If you have a DLL flat file then just move to Step 2 else if you have a Module then just Convert it to a Flat DLL file using the Recmod Tools provided by us. Note it that you cannot edit a module but only a flat file.

2. UnSign the DLL file

You need to first remove the signed certificate from the DLL first. Drag the DLL file over UnSigner.exe. Done. You’ll notice the size of DLL file increased a little.

3. Get measure of Icons

Open the DLL file in the Resource Hacker Application and make a note of all the Icons you need to replace and their respective dimensions. This way you can easily get the measure of the Icons you need to create to replace the Default Icons. Here we take the example of tshres.192.dll,

A more simpler way is to extracting all the icons of the DLL in a folder first. Just go to Actions/Save all Resources and save the “.rc” file in a new folder. This will extract all the default icons present in that DLL.

You can this way find out what all icons that DLL caters.

4. Prepare new Icons to add to your DLL

Use Icon Maker and create the icons to be replaced in the DLL. But you need to make sure that the size of Icons are correct for each Resolution of the Device you want to use it on. I’ll tell you the Dimension of icons for W/VGA devices and for W/QVGA you can reduce them to half.

• Taskbar Icons(Battery Signal, Volume, etc.) – 32x32px
• Start Button(WM 6.1) – 36x41px
• Start Button(WM 6.5) – 32x32px
• Soft Key Buttons(WM 6.5.x) – 48x48px

Now there may be few other Icons such as for the Folders, Dialer, etc. So the dimension of these you need to be aware of in Step 3.

5. Replacing the Icons in the DLL file

Now you must have already opened the DLL file in the Resource Hacker Application. So now you need to individually replace each icon with the new ones you created in step 4. Just right click on the Icon Resource you want to change and select “Replace Resource”.

Then simply browse to the respective icon you created in Step 4 which you want to add.

6. ReSign the DLL

The last thing you need to do is ReSign the DLL. For doing this:

1. Extract the msigntools.7z to a separate folder.
2. Copy the DLL inside that folder
3. Click on siggner.exe and browse select that DLL file. You can select multiple files aswel.
4. Next just click on “Start Sign Process”. Instantly all the DLL files will be signed and there.
5. To check whether they got signed or not, notice that reduced file size of the DLL and also a new Text file is created mentioning “Warning: This file is signed, but not timestamped. Succeeded”. Which means Signing process was Successful.

7. Edit the BMP files

The BMP files are used for showing icons of Bluetooth and Headset as shown in the first Image. Not the behind properly editing these icons is, making 2files for each icon, one for the Icon with Black Background and another with the Icon area Back and the background being white. Do this for all these BMP files and you can replace them aswel in the Windows Folder.

This way the whole process is complete and not you can replace this DLL in your windows folder or Create a Cab file or just cook it in the Rom.