Change the icon on windows 7 taskbar for a pinned application

Question

My software Pomodoro Timer is going to display a dynamic icon on Windows 7 taskbar. You may wonder why the application icon need to be dynamic. It's actually a counting down timer for me to help me focus on current task, so called the pomodoro technique:

My way to change the icon is to simply change the Window icon. It works fine when I start the application, but after I pinned it to taskbar, it will display the default icon for the application. The dynamic counter down number will disappear. More worse, after I unpinned it from taskbar, the default behavior will never be recovered, that is, the dynamic icon will not able to be updated correctly. When I start the application again, it will display the default icon, unless I pinned it and unpinned it again, the counting down icon displays again.

I've searched this forum, and Change pinned taskbar icon (windows 7), and tried to change the overlay icon. It works, but not fulfill my requirement, the overlay icon can only display 16x16, and no enough room to display 4 digits.

I also read the MSDN article Application User Model IDs, but i am still not clear whether it can make it or not.

Anyone can help on this? Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Windows 7 supports having a green progress bar be shown over an icon, and pinning doesnt effect the progress bar. So, instead of changing the icon every second, why not change it every few seconds, but have the progress bar count down from 100% of the original set counter value?

Answer 2

The pinned items in the Taskbar are stored as a shortcut at:
%appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar

You can try changing the icon of the Shortcut of your program.

Answer 3

My final solution is:

• on Windows: use icon overlay. You can get more screen shots here.
• on Mac: use different icon. You can get more screen shots here.

I use different solution for Windows and Mac.