Extracting Icons with PowerShell

Last week I was seeing what else I could add to my Windows Terminal setup. If you can launch a console from the command line, you can probably create a Windows Terminal profile for it. Recently, I've added Ruby and Python to my desktop, both of which have interactive consoles. I thought, "Why not add them to Windows Terminal?"

I looked at the properties for the Ruby console and copied and command line. With this, it was easy enough to add a new profile.

{
    // Ruby cmd
    "guid" :"{a7849c4a-db74-4723-adf2-c717357f0a1a}",
    "name" : "Ruby",
    "commandline": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /E:ON /K C:\\Ruby27-x64\\bin\\setrbvars.cmd",
    "tabTitle": "Ruby Cmd"
},

What I didn't have was an icon, but the ruby.exe file did. I needed a PowerShell way to extract the icon and save it to a file. There are plenty of third-party tools that will handle this task, but where's fun in that? I poked around looking for a starting point and came across an old piece of code from Josh Duffney posted on Spiceworks. His code had the key bit I needed, the necessary .NET Framework class and command to extract the icon.

With this inspiration, I wrote this PowerShell script.

#requires -version 5.1

# inspired by https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/592770-extract-icon-from-exe-powershell

[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]
Param(
    [Parameter(Position = 0, Mandatory,HelpMessage = "Specify the path to the file.")]
    [ValidateScript({Test-Path $_})]
    [string]$Path,

    [Parameter(HelpMessage = "Specify the folder to save the file.")]
    [ValidateScript({Test-Path $_})]
    [string]$Destination = ".",

    [parameter(HelpMessage = "Specify an alternate base name for the new image file. Otherwise, the source name will be used.")]
    [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
    [string]$Name,

    [Parameter(HelpMessage = "What format do you want to use? The default is png.")]
    [ValidateSet("ico","bmp","png","jpg","gif")]
    [string]$Format = "png"
    )

    Write-Verbose "Starting $($MyInvocation.MyCommand)"

    Try {
        Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Drawing -ErrorAction Stop
    }
    Catch {
        Write-Warning "Failed to import System.Drawing"
        Throw $_
    }

    Switch ($format) {
        "ico" {$ImageFormat = "icon"}
        "bmp" {$ImageFormat = "Bmp"}
        "png" {$ImageFormat = "Png"}
        "jpg" {$ImageFormat = "Jpeg"}
        "gif" {$ImageFormat = "Gif"}
    }

    $file = Get-Item $path
    Write-Verbose "Processing $($file.fullname)"
    #convert destination to file system path
    $Destination = Convert-Path -path $Destination

    if ($Name) {
        $base = $Name
    }
    else {
        $base = $file.BaseName
    }

    #construct the image file name
    $out = Join-Path -Path $Destination -ChildPath "$base.$format"

    Write-Verbose "Extracting $ImageFormat image to $out"
    $ico =  [System.Drawing.Icon]::ExtractAssociatedIcon($file.FullName)

    if ($ico) {
        #WhatIf (target, action)
        if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess($out, "Extract icon")) {
            $ico.ToBitmap().Save($Out,$Imageformat)
            Get-Item -path $out
        }
    }
    else {
        #this should probably never get called
        Write-Warning "No associated icon image found in $($file.fullname)"
    }

    Write-Verbose "Ending $($MyInvocation.MyCommand)"

The script will extract the icon from the file specified by the Path parameter and save it in the specified format. There are other formats, but I decided on a ValidateSet() attribute with the most likely formats. The script will create an output file name based on the destination and original file name. Or, you can specify an alternate base name. I also added support for -WhatIf.

With this script, I can run a command like this to extract the icon.

That looks good. I'll re-run without -WhatIf to extract the icon.

Now, I can update my Windows Terminal setting.

{
    // Ruby cmd
    "guid" :"{a7849c4a-db74-4723-adf2-c717357f0a1a}",
    "name" : "Ruby",
    "commandline": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /E:ON /K C:\\Ruby27-x64\\bin\\setrbvars.cmd",
    "tabTitle": "Ruby Cmd",
    "icon": "d:\\onedrive\\windowsterminal\\profileicons\\ruby.png"
},

I can do the same thing with Python.exe.

I hope you find this useful. You could easily turn it into a function. Comments and questions are always welcome.