How to Create Your Own Icon Theme

Use your own icons in S Files Pro X for files, folders, libraries, drives, buttons and menus: make a folder of SVG or PNG files and pick it as your icon theme.

S Files Pro X comes with several icon packs, including a Windows XP pack. If none of them is quite right, you can build your own from SVG or PNG files. An icon theme can cover files and folders, recent files, libraries, devices and drives, and the app’s own buttons, menus and bookmarks sidebar.

1. Find the icon themes folder

Icon themes live in the CustomIcons folder inside the app’s LocalState folder:

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Packages\43158JPTGamesandApps.ShresthaFiles-AModernDualPane_pnxmbr0ydfejr\LocalState\CustomIcons

Each folder in CustomIcons is one icon theme, and its folder name is the name you see in the settings. The built-in themes, Default, Office and WindowsXP, are there too.

The easiest way to start is to copy one of the built-in themes, rename the copy (for example My Icons), and replace only the icons you want to change. You can also start from an empty folder.

2. Add your icons

Each icon is an SVG or PNG file named after what it is for. Subfolders are fine: the app looks through the whole theme folder, and the built-in themes use subfolders to keep things tidy. If a theme has both an SVG and a PNG with the same name, the SVG is used.

Files and folders

Name a file’s icon after its extension, without the dot:

File Used for
txt.svg .txt files
pdf.svg .pdf files
jpg.svg .jpg files
defaultfile.svg Any file type that has no icon of its own
defaultfolder.svg All folders

You can also add icons for whole groups of file types. They are used when a file type has no icon of its own:

  • text.svg for text files such as .txt and .json,
  • image.svg for pictures,
  • audio.svg for music and other audio,
  • video.svg for videos.

Always include defaultfile and defaultfolder, so every file and folder has an icon. The same icons are used for recent files on the Home page.

Libraries, devices and drives

Icons Names
Libraries desktop, documents, downloads, music, pictures, videos
Drives, by type fixed (local disks), removable, network, cdrom, unknown

Buttons, menus and the bookmarks sidebar

The built-in themes keep these in three subfolders:

  • Commands: toolbar buttons and menu items, such as copy, cut, paste, delete, rename, newfolder, newfile, refresh, back, forward, up, compress, extract and properties.
  • NavigationCategory: the groups in the bookmarks sidebar, such as home, library, devicesanddrives and clouddrive.
  • BookmarksBottomItems: the items at the bottom of the sidebar, such as editbookmarks, savesettings and mainsettings.

Copy one of the built-in themes to see the complete list of names.

3. For SVG icons, remove the width and height

Open each SVG in a text editor. If the <svg> tag has width and height attributes, delete them and keep the viewBox. Otherwise the icon may not display correctly. For example, change

<svg viewBox="0 0 48 48" width="240px" height="240px">

to

<svg viewBox="0 0 48 48">

PNG icons look best when they are square, with a transparent background.

4. Turn on your theme

Open Settings (Ctrl+P) and go to Theme. Then turn on the parts you made icons for.

Files, folders, libraries and drives

  1. Choose your folder under Colorful Icon Theme for File, Folder, Library, and Drive.
  2. Set any of these to Colorful Themed Icons:
    • Preferred Icon Type for Files
    • Preferred Icon Type for Folders
    • Preferred Icon Type for Recent Files
    • Preferred Icon Type for Libraries, Devices, and Drives

Buttons, menus and bookmarks

  1. Turn on Use Colorful Icons for Commands such as Buttons and Dropdowns.
  2. Choose your folder under Colorful Icon Theme for Bookmarks and Commands such as Buttons and Dropdowns.

The two theme lists are separate, so you can use one theme for your files and another for the buttons, or the same folder for both.

Refresh any open tabs (F5) to see the new icons. If something still looks the same, restart the app.

Where to find icons

Sites such as SVG Repo and Icons8 have large collections of SVG and PNG icons. Check each icon’s license before using it.

Tip: themed icons take a little longer to load than font icons. If you want real previews for photos, you can still turn on Always Load Actual Thumbnail for Some File Types for chosen file types.

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