FILE TYPE ICONS

There are quite a few native file types in Windows that do not have their own exclusive system icons. To fix this what some would consider an inconvenience, I’ve created icons for the file types I use on a regular basis that don’t have icons of their own. I like the icons to look somewhat official, so many of them use elements or even other icons ripped from Windows 10. To apply these icons system-wide, I use applications such as FilesTypeMan to manage file associations, register my own custom file types to Windows, and to add custom icons to file types.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DIGITAL INTERFACE SEQUENCE FILES (.MIDI)

Being someone who composes music, I use MIDI sequences quite a bit–practically daily. These files do not contain any audio data. Rather, they contain instructions for how a sequencer, media player, or electronic instrument such as a synthesizer or keyboard should produce the music. MIDI sequence files sound so different depending on where they are played due to each platform using its own „soundfont,” or instrument set. The file type is basically the sheet music of the computer world.

Within Windows, MIDI files are typically opened with Windows Media Player by default, and are played using the system-standard soundfont, Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth.

Unlike the many audio files or video files it can play, Windows Media Player does not provide a custom icon for MIDI files and instead uses a generic one. The icon I created uses the official MIDI logo atop Windows 10’s generic file icon. While this new icon is rather blatant to what it represents, it’s still simple enough where it looks good at even a mere 16 pixels in both length and width.

COMMODORE SOUND INTERFACE DEVICE FILES (.SID)

SID files are instruction sets extracted from Commodore 64 software and, similar to that of MIDI sequences, contain no audio themselves and rather instructions to produce music. In the Commodore 64’s case, the instructions within software responsible for sound and music would be sent to the SID chip, or essentially the computer’s sound chip, to be then produced within the limit three voices.

These files aren’t actually natively supported in Windows, or any operating system for that matter. In order to listen to them, specific software that emulates the SID chip is needed to decode the instructions and properly output sound. I have a lot of these files since I like to listen to the soundtracks of my favourite C64 games while using a software oscilloscope to view the waveforms, so I put in the time to make an icon for SID files.

The microchip in the icon is ripped right from Windows 10, which is used to represent the original SID chip itself, and the eighth note hints at the file type’s musical premise. I was originally going to use the logo of the SID chip’s manufacturer, MOS Technology, instead of the eighth note, but not only did the black logo blend in too much with the microchip graphic but I could also get into copyright trouble using that logo. I feel the eighth note was a better choice anyway since it is brightly coloured, which stands out against the dark and neutrally-coloured microchip, and also hints at the SID file’s use of a rather unorthodox audio format.

ORIGINAL FILE TYPE ICONS

I have created many of my own file types, which for the most part are used in tandem with my software. Other formats I have created, however, I made just for fun. The icons listed below are those which are utilized with the files for my programs.

WINDY PLAIN TEXT DOCUMENT (.WIND)

Windy Text Document is my own format of plain text file, similar to the standard .TXT format. Many of my programs, such as Batchtastic for example, use this format exclusively for logs, but I personally treat them as I would any other text format. The icon is actually a modified version of a uncommon Windows 10 system icon.