Attach icon to an app

In a former article, we have learned how to use Icon-O-Matic to create a nice icon to attach to a program.

Today, we will focus only on the command to attach the icon and propose a solution to facilitate its usage.

The command

The way to add an icon to a program relies on the attributes.

The command to use for that is "addattr" :

addattr -f icon.hvif -t icon BEOS:ICON myapp

As you can see, this command will need :

• The name of the icon in HVIF format to attach
• The type of attribute : mimeset BEOS:ICON
• The name of the application which will be attached to the icon : myapp in this example

Showcase

Now let's do a quick demo.

Suppose you install the game "QSoloCards" via HaikuDepot :

When you look at the application QSoloCards in "boot/system/apps", it has an icon attached to the executable via the below attribute :

Let's suppose we would like to replace this icon by an image representing a gamepad available in the "/system/data/icons/haiku/categories/32" under the name "applications-games.svg :

In a Terminal call Icon-O-Matic to open this SVG file :

The below gamepad picture is loaded :

Select "File>Export As" in HVIF format :

Save that icon on the Desktop with the name "games.hvif".

Then create a new folder named "scripts" in "/boot/home"

Go into this folder and edit a file named "QSoloCards" :

lpe SoloCards &

Put in this file two lines :

#!/bin/bash
/boot/system/apps/QSoloCards

Save the file and quit Pe editor.

The aim of this bash script is to launch the game "QSoloCards".

Indicate this file can be executable :

chmod +x ./QSoloCards

Great !

If you look at its icon, it's the one used for text files :

Now let's attach to this script file the nice gamepad icon we have just saved before :

addattr -f /boot/home/Desktop/game.hvif -t icon BEOS:ICON /boot/scripts/QSoloCards 

If you check in the Tracker for the information on this file, you can see the BEOS:ICON attribute is now attached :

And indeed, the Tracker is displaying this icon on the bash script "QSoloCards" :

Please note the addattr command will not work directly on the programs in the "/system/apps/" system folder because this folder and its content are not modifiable.

Simplify the command access

I really don't care about the details on the attributes command, so how to simplify this ?

In a Terminal, create a function by doing a copy/paste of the below :

seticon()
{ 
  if [ $# -ne 2 ]; then 
    echo "Usage: seticon <icon-file> <executable>" 
    return 1 
  fi 
  addattr -f "$1" -t icon BEOS:ICON "$2" 
}

Now if you need to call "addattr" again, just type :

seticon /boot/home/Desktop/game.hvif /boot/scripts/QSoloCards

Great, it's doing exactly the same job but more easily !

The command is now more explicit and only the minimum is required : the icon file as the first argument and the executable to modify :)

If you want to keep this function available after restarting your system, just update or create the "/boot/home/config/settings/profile" file by adding the seticon() function :

lpe /boot/home/config/settings/profile &

I hope you find this article useful to attach customized icons to your favorite applications :)