Get Icon from UWP App

Question

I want to extract the icon of an UWP App to build a Explorer like "Open With" menue.

With the help of SHAssocEnumHandlers i managed to get the associated applications to a given file extension.

With IAssocHandler::GetIconLocation i get for UWP Apps (Microsoft Edge) something like:

@{Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_41.16299.371.0_neutral__8wekyb3d8bbwe?ms-resource://Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge/Files/Assets/MicrosoftEdgeSquare44x44.png}

If i use SHLoadIndirectString on this string i get:

C:\WINDOWS\SystemApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\Assets\MicrosoftEdgeSquare44x44.scale-100.png

But that is the wrong Icon (has no color or contrast).

In the directory:

C:\WINDOWS\SystemApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\Assets\

Are a lot of different Images. I don't understand how to choose the correct icon.

I tried to look up the "AppxManifest.xml" but i looks completly different for different Apps.

For an non UWP App i get as IconLocation something like:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\NOTEPAD.EXE

Then i can use:

Icon.ExtractAssociatedIcon()

and everything is fine. I didn't finde any way to do the same with an UWP App.

Answer 1

UWP apps (or Windows Store apps, or apps in what's called sometimes the "AppX application model") information can be queried from official APIs.

These APIs don't have a C# equivalent AFAIK but I've provided sample code to do this in my answer to a similar question here on SO: Getting icon of “modern” Windows app from a desktop application?

The sample application dumps all current loaded Windows Store packages & apps.

Note there is not just one icon for a UWP app, there may be many, to be able to adapt to a specific device, form factors, etc. The sample code has a utility that gets the highest scale image for a given resource.