Irritating little icon glitch

wreckwriter · 23 Jan 2016

On my start menu, the tiled part, all my icons have the same blue background, except Firefox and Thunderbird which are butt ugly gray. Chrome was also gray but I managed to change it by renaming chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml to chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml.bk and reselecting the icon. Cannot find similar files for the 2 Mozilla programs. Just changing icon does nothing (it does change the icon but retains gray background).

Also tried a utility from Windows Club designed for this purpose but it can't touch these 2 icons.

Ideas?

Cliff S · 24 Jan 2016

I can't help you, as I'm just learning to personalize tiles manually, but I will post two forum members names, with mentions, that possibly can, as this is there area of expertise.
Let's see who gets here first, and shine the Bat light::

Calling @Edwin and @Hopachi

dalchina · 24 Jan 2016

Hi this might help: (It covers win 10 too, it says)
[Tip] Customize Start Screen Tiles Background Color, Text Color and Logo in Windows 8.1 and Later - AskVG

Hopachi · 24 Jan 2016

dalchina said:

Hi this might help: (It covers win 10 too, it says)
[Tip] Customize Start Screen Tiles Background Color, Text Color and Logo in Windows 8.1 and Later - AskVG

True.
This should do it.

Hopachi · 24 Jan 2016

wreckwriter said:

On my start menu, the tiled part, all my icons have the same blue background, except Firefox and Thunderbird which are butt ugly gray. Chrome was also gray but I managed to change it by renaming chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml to chrome.VisualElementsManifest.xml.bk and reselecting the icon. Cannot find similar files for the 2 Mozilla programs. Just changing icon does nothing (it does change the icon but retains gray background).

Not sure if they use a tile but that's possible.
Do you have a screenshot of Firefox and Thunderbird icons?

In case of the VisualElementsManifest.xml, don't rename it: you can edit it and change the background color:

Code:

BackgroundColor="#123456"

Color in hexadecimal notation. Save the xml.
Un-pin and re-pin the program.

wreckwriter · 24 Jan 2016

Excellent idea. Unfortunately, there's this caveat:

"Also this method doesn't work for Mozilla Firefox web browser as Firefox registers itself as a "dual-mode" web browser and Windows handles web browsers differently. That's why even if you put a visualelementsmanifest.xml file inside Firefox folder, it gets ignored by Windows."

Appears to apply to Mozilla Thunderbird too. I don't have time to try recreating icons in Photoshop just now, got 2 feet of snow to dig out, but will put it on the todo list.

Hopachi · 24 Jan 2016

I only have Firefox Dev Edition but it's also grey.
Must be somehow automatically generated; I don't see Firefox as dual mode, must have ignored something after the install a while ago.
Will give it a try.

wreckwriter · 24 Jan 2016

Hopachi said:

I only have Firefox Dev Edition but it's also grey.
Must be somehow automatically generated; I don't see Firefox as dual mode, must have ignored something after the install a while ago.
Will give it a try.

Not a big deal, just irritating.

Hopachi · 24 Jan 2016

wreckwriter said:

Not a big deal, just irritating.

All other tiles are blue? I guess from the theme color?

wreckwriter · 24 Jan 2016

Hopachi said:

All other tiles are blue? I guess from the theme color?

Correct. Just Firefox and Thunderbird remain gray.