Pico

Pico converts PNG images to ICO icons by packing the PNG data directly into the ICO file. This feature has been supported since Windows Vista and results in smaller ICO files.

Build Pico with cargo build --release and move the executable from target/release/pico(.exe) to a directory with environment access. After this, you can use Pico from the command line:

pico [OPTIONS] <INPUT>...

Arguments

Argument	Usage
<INPUT>...	One or more PNG input file or directory paths

Pico must be given one or more unnamed arguments containing paths to PNG input files. The order of the paths is 'stable' and will match the order of the data in the ICO output file.

If a directory path is given, then it will be expanded into every file path in the directory with a .png file extension (case-insensitive.) The expanded file paths are inserted in-place where the directory path was, sorted into alphabetical order. Subdirectories will not be searched.

Options

Short	Long	Arguments	Usage
-o	--output	<PATH>	ICO output file path
-s	--sort	(None)	Sort ICO entries by descending resolution
-f	--force	(None)	Overwrite existing ICO output file
-h	--help	(None)	Print help
-V	--version	(None)	Print version

If the --output option is not set, then the path to the ICO output file will be the same as the first PNG input file path, but with a .ico file extension.

If the --sort flag is set, then Pico will sort the entries in the ICO output file by resolution from largest to smallest.

Pico will fail if a file already exists at the ICO output file path, unless the --force flag is set.

If the --help or --version flag is set, then Pico will print information but not perform any action.

Examples

Pack icon.png into icon.ico:

pico icon.png

Pack all PNG images in icons/ into icons.ico:

pico icons/

Pack input.png into output.ico:

pico input.png -o output.ico

Pack foo.png and bar.png into foo.ico:

pico foo.png bar.png

Pack icon_64x.png and icon_32x.png into icon.ico, overwriting an existing file:

pico icon_64x.png icon_32x.png -o icon.ico -f

Pack icon_32x.png and all PNG images in icons/ into icon.ico, sorting icon entries by descending resolution, and overwriting an existing file:

pico icon_32x.png icons/ -sf -o icon.ico

Dependencies

Pico uses clap for command line argument parsing.

Earlier versions of Pico used png to parse and validate PNG files, but Pico now naïvely 'skim reads' only the data it needs for building ICO files. This was done to improve performance and reduce code size.

License

Pico is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt for a full copy of the license text.