Investigate and fix Windows app icon showing blue box in production #62

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1. damoahdominic commented on Apr 3, 2026

   

   damoahdominic

   on Apr 3, 2026

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   Root-cause note from initial investigation:

   I inspected the Windows packaging assets/config in apps/editor and found that the build is consistently wired to resources/win32/code.ico for the executable and installer:

   • apps/editor/build/lib/electron.ts → winIcon: "resources/win32/code.ico"
   • apps/editor/build/gulpfile.vscode.win32.js → stamps resources/win32/code.ico into the built .exe via rcedit
   • apps/editor/build/win32/code.iss → SetupIconFile={#RepoDir}\resources\win32\code.ico
   • apps/editor/resources/win32/VisualElementsManifest.xml → tile assets also point at resources/app/resources/win32/code_150x150.png and code_70x70.png

   So the Windows pipeline is not missing an icon path — it is using one specific icon path everywhere.

   The likely issue is the actual contents/quality of resources/win32/code.ico. The current .ico appears to be a single-frame ICO (Pillow only reports a single 256x256 image), which is a common cause of poor/fallback Windows icon rendering in packaged apps. Windows executables/installers generally behave best when the .ico contains multiple embedded sizes (for example 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 128, 256) rather than just one large frame. A bad/incomplete ICO can show up as a blank/blue/fallback box in some production contexts even when the path/config is correct.

   Also worth checking in the fix:

   • whether the branded OCcode icon asset was regenerated correctly from source artwork
   • whether the same replacement should be applied to installer/tile companion assets (code_70x70.png, code_150x150.png) to keep Windows branding consistent
   • whether any signing/build step is reusing a stale cached executable icon

   Conclusion for now: primary suspected root cause is an incomplete or improperly generated Windows code.ico, not a missing config reference.

   Next step will be to replace/regenerate the Windows icon set with a proper multi-size .ico and validate that macOS/Linux icon assets remain untouched.