Task: Create and Change Icons in Workbench Using IconEdit on Your Amiga Computer
Needed: Amiga computer or emulator with Workbench
Time: 10-15 minutes
Introduction
I was not happy with the default floppy disk icons for my hard drives on the desktop of my Workbench 3.1 installs, so I decided to look into replacing them with something more suitable. I decided to make my own using the IconEdit software that comes with Workbench. This was remarkably easy.
Icons for disk drives, drawers, and files are stored in .info files that are often hidden and hard to find. The best way to see these is to open the command line interface (CLI), navigate to the desired folder, and type LIST. You will see the .info files there. The key is replacing the appropriately named .info file with a new one holding the image you desire. Here, I dropped a new disk.info file with my icon into my hard disk folders. The new icon is then used by Workbench.
Instructions
Navigate to the Tools directory in Workbench and launch IconEdit. You will see the initial screen shown below.
Next, use the color and drawing tools to create the new icon. Note that the size of the icon used by Workbench depends on the pixels used in the grey box. You can draw lines, boxes, etc. You can see my new icon below that is meant to resemble a rack-mounted server as my hard drive.
When you finish, you can save the file in the directory you want. Simply right click to bring up the application menu at the top. Open the Project menu to load and save files. Note that navigating to desired directory should reveal the .info file. You can simply click on that file to use the same name and replace it. Each of my hard drive partitions on the desktop had a default file called disk.info. I simply overwrote that file with my new icon. The first screenshot shows the hidden Disk.info file using CLI. The second screenshot below shows my desktop with the default floppy drive icons and my new hard disk icon for the Games drive. The third screenshot shows disk.info saved to Games, Utilities, Workbench, and RAM Disk directories.
Comments
It took me a bit to understand how icons work. The instructions out there are not very clear. For example, I kept reading that the .info needed to be the same name as the directory (e.g. Games.info). It was only after I saw the Disk.info file in that directory that I realized I was doing it wrong. This was confusing because the .info files are hidden from the desktop view. You need to use the CLI command line or an app like IconEdit to actually see those hidden files.
You can download my disk.info file to give it a try. I had to change the file extension to .doc for WordPress to allow me to upload. Change it back to .info.
Note that I changed the icon of the RAM disk by loading my custom disk.info file into the root of that directory. Note that the contents of the RAM disk get deleted when the Amiga is turned off or rebooted. This will delete that file.
There are icon libraries like Glow Icons people have created with fancier icons. I will try those in another project. For now, I am happy to replace the default floppy disk icons.
Here is a nice description of all the IconEdit options and commands.