Instead, it is showing the icon for applicationframehost.exe. See attached screenshot.

Thoughts?

Actually applicationframehost.exe doesn't even have an icon - the icon you are seeing there is part of Winstep's bundled icon library.

You see, even though Windows success was in great part due to it being an open environment, Microsoft always had Apple envy: it dreams of creating an environment where applications can only be sold through the Windows store.

Why? Because Microsoft would then be able to take a 30% cut out of every single Windows application being sold, even though they had nothing to do with their creation and did nothing to deserve it.

But because Windows is an open architecture, they can't/couldn't do this.

So, someone inside Microsoft came up with the 'great idea' of making a closed version of the OS, one that would run on top of Windows. To confuse people, they called it 'Windows RT' even though it really has nothing to do with Windows.

The same way they are trying to force 'Windows as a service' with Windows 10 (i.e.; something you will never actually own but instead pay a monthly rent for), they are also trying to force this new 'Windows' down people's throats.

And that is why you have this Metro/Modern/Universal (pick your poison name) madness. It's alien DNA running inside Win32 - and the only way it can run inside Win32 is by 'attaching' itself to real Win32 applications such as applicationframehost, as the good little parasite that they are.

Their goal is to slowly but steadily dominate their host until they are eventually able to fully replace it.

Being alien to Windows, they do not follow the same rules that other Win32 applications do. Even though Microsoft is trying to push UWP by replacing as many OS components with their alien 'app' equivalent as they can, they haven't made a great job in terms of actual integration (what for?).

So, even though Explorer has access to inside information because it is a part of the OS - such as the icon of a Universal app (if you can actually call 'icons' to the images apps use to represent them, because they certainly aren't) - non-Microsoft applications are left in the dark. There is no API to get the icon/image of a running Universal app.

And that is why you get that generic icon to represent running Universal apps.

So, other than that, you have no opinion about the new 'universal app' format from Microsoft? LOL!

You cracked me up with that one, Jorge. Yeah, huge issues with UWPs. I'm hoping Microsoft will

I suspected there was no direct solution at this time (for inaccessible 'icons'/images), though couldn't be sure. I suppose in the meantime the answer is to manually assign an image or .ico to each UWP app that is put in a Nexus dock.

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

And I was being careful not to go overboard lol



Note that what I said above applies to running apps.

For shortcuts on the dock you can actually get a UWP 'icon', but the only way to do it is by dragging an existing UWP app shortcut (usually from the Start Menu or the Desktop) into the dock. The dock can then get the correct icon for that UWP app because that information is included in the shortcut (.lnk) file itself.

However, icons of running applications are handled/retrieved differently: first, what appears on the running applications list is based on a set of filtering rules applied to all currently open windows. The handles (hwnd) of windows that pass this filtering are then used to get the window title and the process name (executable name) of the application that owns that window.

Since the windows themselves (for legacy reasons) only usually provide 16x16 icons (which would look terrible when magnified), the actual icon shown for a running application is thus retrieved from the executable (application icon) instead.

The problem is that the Win32 executable hosting UWP apps is always the same: applicationframehost.exe - and it doesn't even have an icon.

Since the executable for all the different UWP apps is always the same, the only way to assign a customized task icon for each of the different UWP apps it hosts is via the Windows Caption.