How to embed an icon in a PowerShell GUI executable?

Question

I created a powershell gui and I would like to insert an icon to my windows.form.
I did it this way and I generated an exe file with ps2exe.

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
[System.Windows.Forms.Application]::EnableVisualStyles()

#region begin GUI{ 

$Form                            = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Form
$Form.ClientSize                 = '400,230'
$Form.text                       = "Test"
$Form.TopMost                    = $false
$Icon                            = New-Object system.drawing.icon (".\icon\test.ico")
$Form.Icon                       = $Icon

Everything works well if I bring along with my exe the dir icon with the icon test.ico but now I would incorporate the icon in my code without having to bring the icon directory with my exe.

Is it possible to do it? If so, how?

Answer 1

You can embed graphic information in your code by using a base64 encoded image like below:

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
[System.Windows.Forms.Application]::EnableVisualStyles()

$Form            = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Form
$Form.ClientSize = '400,230'
$Form.text       = "Test"
$Form.TopMost    = $false

# This base64 string holds the bytes that make up the orange 'G' icon (just an example for a 32x32 pixel image)
$iconBase64      = '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'
$iconBytes       = [Convert]::FromBase64String($iconBase64)
# initialize a Memory stream holding the bytes
$stream          = [System.IO.MemoryStream]::new($iconBytes, 0, $iconBytes.Length)
$Form.Icon       = [System.Drawing.Icon]::FromHandle(([System.Drawing.Bitmap]::new($stream).GetHIcon()))

# PowerShell versions older than 5.0 use this:
# $stream        = New-Object IO.MemoryStream($iconBytes, 0, $iconBytes.Length)
# $Form.Icon     = [System.Drawing.Icon]::FromHandle((New-Object System.Drawing.Bitmap -Argument $stream).GetHIcon())

[void]$Form.ShowDialog()

# when done, dispose of the stream and form
$stream.Dispose()
$Form.Dispose()

To convert your own image to a base64 string, there are lots of online converters like this one.

To go the other way around (convert base64 image data back to a graphic image) they also have a page for that here

Of course you can also do the conversion to Base64 using Powershell:

[Convert]::ToBase64String((Get-Content ".\icon\test.ico" -Encoding Byte))