Setting the Windows taskbar icon in PyQt

Question

I'm working on an applcation in Python's PyQt4 and cannot find how to change the taskbar icon. I made my .ui files in Qt's Designer, where I can change the windowIcon properties. But that is not what I am looking for. I want to change the look of the application's icon in windows taskbar. For now it is Python logo in a window icon.

I found some information on SO: link but it's not helping me much.

I tried:

app = QtGui.QApplication([])
app.setWindowIcon(QtGui.QIcon('chip_icon_normal.png'))
app.exec_()

But the icon remains unchanged.

What i want to change, showing the picture: (This is done calling the setWindowIcon on main window/ dialog, or the application, as shown above.)

Katerine

What platform are you on? And why doesn't that SO link help you? – Remsen

If you are not looking for the icon defined by windowIcon, I'm not sure which icon you are looking for. A screenshot would help. – Wivina

@Remsen I have Python 2.7 on Windows 8 64bit, using PyQt4. And that link doesn't help me because it changes the window left top corner icon, not the one in the taskbar, as shown in the edited post. – Katerine

@Marko. But did you read the accepted answer and try the suggested workaround? – Remsen

@Remsen Thanks and brilliant. I didn't read it well beforehand! Please submit an answer, so I can award you the bounty! – Katerine

@Marko: Alternatively, if you convert your app to an exe with its own icon (with py2exe or pyinstaller), that also solves the issue. Just a heads up, if you were planning on doing this in the end. – Wivina

@Wivina Infact that is something that I am planning to do. What you said, was very useful, and if I understand it means, if I am going to make an exe file, I can freely remove those added lines? And it's is like somekind of a "bug" or something. – Katerine

@Marko: Yes, you can leave out those lines for the exe package. This issue can be considered as a bug, probably solvable in the pythonw.exe side. That answer explains it quite well actually. – Wivina

Answer 1

This problem is caused by some peculiarities in how taskbar icons are handled on the Windows platform.

See this answer for details, along with a workaround using ctypes.

Remsen

Answer 2

It seems to me that the problem may be caused by lack of icon with the right size. The following setup worked for me in PyQT4:

# set app icon    
app_icon = QtGui.QIcon()
app_icon.addFile('gui/icons/16x16.png', QtCore.QSize(16,16))
app_icon.addFile('gui/icons/24x24.png', QtCore.QSize(24,24))
app_icon.addFile('gui/icons/32x32.png', QtCore.QSize(32,32))
app_icon.addFile('gui/icons/48x48.png', QtCore.QSize(48,48))
app_icon.addFile('gui/icons/256x256.png', QtCore.QSize(256,256))
app.setWindowIcon(app_icon)

I have got a task bar icon in Windows 7 and correct icons in all windows without any changes to ui files.

Pearlypearman

did not give me a taskbar icon in windows 10 – Fathomless

Not working unfortunately. On windows 10. – Cundiff

didn't work for me on PySide2/windows11 either – Levantine

Answer 3

You need to call setWindowIcon(...) on the window, not on the application.

Here's an example, which works for me:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import os
import sys
import subprocess
import os.path

from PyQt4 import QtGui
from PyQt4 import QtCore

class MyWin(QtGui.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        super(MyWin, self).__init__(parent)
        self.setWindowTitle("My Window")
        self.setWindowIcon(QtGui.QIcon('test_icon.png'))
        self.show()

def main(args):
    app = QtGui.QApplication([])

    ww= MyWin()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(sys.argv[1:])

Ce

No, setting an icon for QApplication is fine. It defines the default icon. Any window that doesn't specify an icon will use that. See docs – Wivina

@Ce i don't know if it would work, because i initialize my code differently, but i think that you do the same, with setWindowIcon method, but it's the small icon in the left top corner of the window if i'm not mistaken? – Katerine

Actually, my answer won't solve the problem. I just now tried removing the self.setWindowIcon(...) in the __init__() method, and called app.setWindowIcon(...) inside of main instead, and it works, as Avaris said. I have no explanation why it would work for me, but not for Marko. – Ce

Answer 4

For me, the following code works for both changing task bar icon and window icon

win.setWindowIcon(QIcon('logo.png'))

Serrulate

Welcome to StackOverflow! You are answering a very old question which already has an answer. The OP has already tried your code, but it wasn't working in his case. – Vallie

@Serrulate Same as Kamyar, except you are right for PyQt5 it now handles it cross platform using setWindowIcon() – Gowan