Wicogen

I built it for my own library of shows, and for the folders on my computer in general: I wanted to tell each folder apart at a glance by a picture of what it holds, and to set that up easily.

Windows lets you give a folder its own icon, but only through a few dialogs, and only from an icon file. A normal picture has to be converted with another tool first. For a library of movies, shows or projects, that means finding a picture, converting it and setting it, one folder at a time.

Even then, Windows keeps old icons in a cache, so a new icon often doesn't show up until the cache is cleared or File Explorer restarts.

• Folder icons only accept icon files, not pictures
• Every folder is set by hand, one at a time
• Finding a good picture is a search of its own
• Windows often keeps showing the old icon

Wicogen is a desktop app with two ways to work. From a file: pick a picture and a folder, or a whole folder of pictures, and each picture becomes the icon of the folder with the same name. From the net: point it at a folder, and it searches Google, Bing, IMDB or MyAnimeList by each folder's name, downloads the results, and lets you choose a picture or picks one for you.

Either way, Wicogen makes a proper icon file in seven sizes, tells Windows to use it for that folder, and refreshes File Explorer so the change shows. A disc style frames movie and series covers like a DVD case. From version 1.2 an installer adds a right-click menu to File Explorer, so setting an icon takes one click, without opening the app.

Wicogen is the first app I published for anyone to download. It was downloaded 1,000+ times.

It also taught me what shipping to the public takes. I released six versions in seven weeks, each with its own release notes, and fixed what came up along the way: drag and drop, file extensions in capital letters, special characters in IMDB searches, and two folders with similar names that got the same icon. Version 1.2 split it into an installer with a right-click menu and a portable version less than half the size.

I built Wicogen on my own, from the idea to the public releases: the interface, the icon making, the image search, the installer and the right-click menu, the Windows builds and the release notes. I published the code on GitHub under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

I didn't draw any of its images. The pictures that become icons are the user's own or come from the search, the app's own icon and most of its button icons are from Flaticon, and the two extra colour themes are by Clive Bostock.