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There’s no easy way to customize system icons on Windows. There are tools, such as 7TSP, which make it easier to customize system icons by patching system files. This approach works, but has several drawbacks. Patching system files can be dangerous, can be difficult to revert, and the patched files can be overridden by a Windows update.

With the Windhawk Resource Redirect mod, icon themes can be installed without modifying system files. What the mod does instead is redirecting the loaded icon files to a different folder, making all programs load alternative icons without actually touching the original icons on the disk. This redirection is only done in memory, and can be disabled easily and safely by disabling the mod or exiting Windhawk.

More than 50 icon themes can be found in the Resource Redirect icon themes repository. Below is a short video demonstrating the mod. I want to thank Undisputed00x who collected the icon themes, converted them to the right format, and organized them nicely in the repository.

Click on the image to view the demo video on YouTube.

Introducing version 1.5 of Windhawk, the tool that aims to make it easier to customize Windows and programs.

Symbol cache server

The most notable new feature of the new Windhawk version is the integration with the symbol cache server.

Most users are probably familiar with this dialog which pops up after installing mods or after updating Windows:

Some mods rely on symbol files which are downloaded from the Microsoft public symbol server. These symbol files aren’t tiny, and downloading them takes time. The symbol cache server was created to calculate and store only the necessary information for each mod, which is much smaller than the symbol files. The new Windhawk version checks the symbol cache server for the relevant data, and only if this data is missing (e.g. the Windows version was just released or is too old), it falls back to downloading the symbol files.

General stability

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I’m excited to announce a mod that I’ve been working on for some time now: Vertical Taskbar for Windows 11. This was the #1 request on the list in Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar. The development of this mod took some iterations and failed approaches, but I was finally able to make it work. The implementation is largely based on element rotation, which is available for UWP elements, but it also required many tricks and adjustments to make it work correctly, having the right dimensions and positions for all elements.
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About 45 hours ago (around May 2, 13:00 UTC) Windhawk users started reporting that some of the mods stopped working. Below is a summary of what is affected and what can be done, followed by more details.

Update (21 May): The problem was resolved.

Summary

What is affected?

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This mod has been on my list for a while. I think the default spacing is just huge.

Back in Windows XP, there were 2 pixels between each tray icon. It was increased to 8 in Windows 7, and then to 16 in newer Windows 11 versions. I think that 8 is fine but 16 is just too much for a desktop computer.

You can get the Taskbar notification icon spacing mod here.

Enjoy, and let me know if you encounter any problems.

Windows 11 Taskbar Styler is an advanced Windhawk mod to override style attributes of the taskbar control elements. It started as a basic tool to override styles, such as color and size, of elements by their type and name. This simplistic approach was very limited, as many elements don’t have a unique type or name. In the new version of the mod, several new capabilities were added which make it much more powerful:

• Element targeting: Index, properties and a visual state can now be specified for a target. This enables to target elements which were difficult or impossible to target without affecting other, unrelated elements.
• Visual states: Styles can now be specified per visual state. This means that different styles can be specified for states such as a hovered or an active element, which is a common requirement.
• Style definition: Styles can now be specified in XAML form. This is a powerful capability that allows to use advanced styles, such as a gradient or an external image instead of a simple color for styling an element.

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Introducing version 1.4 of Windhawk, the tool that aims to make it easier to customize Windows programs.

The first version of Windhawk was released almost two years ago, and v1.0 was released about a year ago. During the recent updates, great care was taken to improve Windhawk’s stability and minimize damage if anything goes wrong. That includes Windhawk not injecting code into critical system processes by default (added in v1.1), adding safe mode (added in v1.3), and various other fixes and improvements. Having thousands of users running Windhawk on a daily basis with no major issues, it seems like a good time to officially drop the beta label.

Other changes in version 1.4 include a smaller installer, new translations, more advanced options, and various other fixes and improvements. For the complete list of changes in the new Windhawk version, check out the changelog. You can get the new version here.

UWPSpy was just updated to support WinUI 3 applications. The experience is the same, so check out the project’s page if you’re not familiar with it yet.

Introducing UWPSpy, an inspection tool for UWP and WinUI 3 applications that enables to view and manipulate UI elements and their properties in real time.

I’ve been interested in UWP since the release of Windows 11, where the taskbar UI was reimplemented using a new technology called XAML Islands. I created UWPSpy after gaining some experience with UWP. UWPSpy makes it easy to experiment with UWP UI elements and see how various changes behave before making them permanent. One example where UWPSpy comes in handy is with the Windows 11 Taskbar Styler mod, refer to its details page to see examples of UI customizations that are possible.
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Introducing another Windhawk mod that brings a 7+ Taskbar Tweaker option to Windows 11: Cycle taskbar buttons with mouse wheel. As the name implies, the mod allows to cycle between taskbar buttons by scrolling the mouse wheel over the taskbar. Additionally, the mod allows to cycle between taskbar buttons with keyboard shortcuts.

Get the mod here:
Cycle taskbar buttons with mouse wheel