Customizing Your Chrome Extension Icons
Posted on 10. Jun, 2011 by Julian West in Chrome, Tips
Extensions: you’ve got to love them. They add wonderful functionality to our beloved Chrome browser. But let’s face it people: sometimes the icons that we click to evoke that functionality, well, they could look a whole lot better. Take the Google Dictionary Extension icon for example.
No offense to Google, but this icon is a bit ugly. It looks like a toddler’s block, not a dictionary. So what’s a poor Chrome geek to do? Well, I made my way over to www.iconfinder.com, did a search for “dictionary” and lo and behold, I found a snazzy dictionary icon to more fully represent this wonderful resource of knowledge. It looks like this:
Now that I’ve found my icon, next stop: the extensions folder. Paths differ according to what operating system you are working on. The paths listed for your operating system are found below. (Thanks ChromeStory)
Windows 7 : C:\Users\USER NAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions.
Mac : ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions.
Windows XP : C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions
Linux: /home/~USER~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions (thanks to this link.)
NOTE: This is the path for CrunchBang Linux, which is a Debian based Linux distribution. It could be a little different for other Linux distributions.
I just browsed the extension folder to find the icon that was being used currently in Chrome. This one: 
. There may be several icons that look the same, but have different names. The name of the icon that’s being used for your extension is icon_19.png. I renamed the icon I downloaded to icon_19.png and renamed the old icon dictionaryicon_19_backup.png.
I fired up Chrome and this was the result of my efforts:
Ahhhh….much better.
It’s a good idea to keep a backup of your icons. When your extension is updated, you will loose your customization. Just follow the same steps and your customized icon will be reimplemented.
Pretty fun and easy hack. Hope you like it.
