icoextract is an icon extractor for Windows PE files (.exe/.dll/.mun), written in Python. It also includes a thumbnailer script (exe-thumbnailer) for Linux desktops.
This project is inspired by extract-icon-py, icoutils, and others.
icoextract aims to be:
- Lightweight
- Portable (cross-platform)
- Fast on large files
You can install the project via pip: pip3 install icoextract[thumbnailer]
On Linux, you can activate the thumbnailer by copying exe-thumbnailer.thumbnailer into the thumbnailers directory:
/usr/local/share/thumbnailers/if you installedicoextractglobally~/.local/share/thumbnailersif you installedicoextractfor your user only
The thumbnailer should work with any file manager that implements the Freedesktop Thumbnails Standard: this includes Nautilus, Caja, Nemo, Thunar (when Tumbler is installed), and PCManFM. KDE / Dolphin uses a different architecture and is not supported here.
You can install icoextract from any of these distribution repositories:
icoextract ships icoextract and icolist scripts to extract and list icon resources inside a file.
Note: recent versions of Windows (Windows 10 1903+) have moved icons from system libraries (shell32.dll, etc.) into a new C:\Windows\SystemResources folder. icoextract can extract these .mun files natively, but the .dlls themselves no longer contain icons.
For API docs, see https://projects.jlu5.com/icoextract.html
usage: icoextract [-h] [-V] [-n NUM] [-v] input output
Windows PE EXE icon extractor.
positional arguments:
input input filename (.exe/.dll/.mun)
output output filename (.ico)
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-V, --version show program's version number and exit
-n NUM, --num NUM index of icon to extract
-v, --verbose enables debug logging
usage: icolist [-h] [-V] [-v] input
Lists group icons present in a program.
positional arguments:
input input filename
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-V, --version show program's version number and exit
-v, --verbose enables debug logging
