Repair Steam Desktop Icons

[Stryder]

When we start playing with our Steam installation folders, it's relatively common to create a situation where your Steam Icons no longer show up when you make a Desktop Shortcut. The shortcut shows, but the proper icon is missing. This can be rather irritating.

There are several situations where this can occur, this just covers one of the more obscure problems: when we have multiple hard drives, with Steam Libraries on them, and we change our main 'C:' drive.

I just had a situation where some of my Libraries are fine, but, somehow, all the games on just one drive are missing their icons.

Steam keeps it's game icons in a folder called "\Steam\Games", under the main Steam folder. Default is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam\Games"

They all have fun names, too! Not a single game name involved! So how do you add the missing icon with the correct name?

Easy!

Find the game in your Steam Library and right click it. Make a Desktop Shortcut.

Right click on the Desktop Shortcut and click "properties" and you will see that the shortcut goes to a 'website'. In this case: steam://rungameid/585040 This one is for "Dry Erase Infinite VR Whiteboard", a handy program! That number at the end is what you will need.

Now go to the following website: https://steamdb.info/app/585040/info/ For other games, change the number to reflect the number for your game, that you got from your shortcut.

Scroll down to "Additional Information". This should be on the default page that you loaded, if not, it's the third link on the left: "Information".

You're looking for the first entry: "clienticon". Click the link to the right of it; the long string of alpha numeric characters. This will take you to a page that just has the game icon. Right click on the icon and choose "Save Image As". Choose a place that you will be able to find it again. For this case, we'll save it to the Desktop. Do NOT change the name!!!

Now the hard part: drag that icon to your Steam icon folder discussed above: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam\Games".

Now delete the shortcut to the game that you created earlier, the one without the correct icon.

Go back to the Steam application and 'create a desktop shortcut' again.

Done. Your shortcut should now be recreated with the proper icon.



Hope this helps someone!

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Make a guide...?

[Stryder]

Well, this is one, but if there's a place to post Steam Guides, I don't know where it is, do you?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Create a guide. You don't need to post them anywhere as they are already attached to something upon creation.

[Stryder]

That's for creating guides for particular games. Didn't find a place for "Steam": closest I can get is for "SteamVR". Got a link for general "Steam" guides? Thanks!

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Use the following link to create a new guide not linked to a game:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/editguide/?appid=753

[Stryder]

@cSg|mc-Hotsauce: You are the Man! Or Woman! Thank you!

Repairing Steam Desktop Icons 

A Guide for Steam

By: Stryder

Tip on how to repair Steam Desktop Shortcuts

Edit: there are actually a couple of situations that can cause this issue: as I think of the rest of them, I'll add them to the guide.

[gleep2]

I've tried this repeatedly but it does not load the icon that is shown. It loads a pic of the globe, even though the pic in steam game file is not that pic. any indeas?

[landmass]

What kind of heathen has files on their desktop?

[Stryder]

@gleep2: I have found that sometimes the icon does not take. Sometimes restarting Steam brings it back, but I've had to do this manually for some of them, lately.

For those (and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why just some have this issue), right click on the desktop shortcut and click properties. It should show the icon, even tho it won't display it on the desktop.
Next, click "Change Icon". Browse to the folder described above ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam\Games") and look for the proper icon.
If the proper icon doesn't show up in the properties window, you can follow the procedure above to determine which icon is the correct one.
This fixed those weird ones for me. Hope this helps!

[Juan]

THANK YOU

[Долги 45к]

I just don't have words that describes how useful is this guide, you just saved my entire life!!!

[sᴀɪɴᴛ ᴀʙᴅᴜʟ]

It works like a charm, I logged in to say thanks

[Old Cat 🐱]

Worked perfectly after I moved steam client folder, thanks!

[thenightwolf73]

Hi there! I'm quite new to Steam, and came across this kind of problem with one of my desktop shortcuts. Yet, it still worked. I had other Steam game icons as desktop shortcuts as well but they were fine. I had been trying a few things and unsuccessful to fix the missing icon. Then I just happened to try something and it worked. Somehow in doing things I had the right game folder open. Which tracing back the folder path it was ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Mist Survival") Mist Survival being the game Icon that I had to fix. I simply right clicked on the Mist Survival application and chose Create shortcut from the drop down menu. It created it in that same folder and I moved it onto my desktop. Deleted the old shortcut with the missing icon, and moved the new one where the old one was. I tested it, it works! Now if you want, edit the shortcut's name, in my case I just deleted the added "-Shortcut" so it only said "Mist Survival". I hope that also may help someone.

[albatrox94]

Thank you! I was just about to give up and this saved me!