Sunday, January 14, 2024

Custom Desktop Icons for StoreFront

 A forum user asked if it was possible to use their own custom icon for desktops in StoreFront. While the icons are displayed within StoreFront, the actual icon management is done on a Delivery Controller.

Open PowerShell on a DDC and issue the following commands (PowerShell cmdlets are case-insensitive).

# load the Citrix cmdlets
Add-PSSnapin Citrix*

Get-BrokerIcon | Select Uid | ft –auto


This will give you the ID of the last icon in use (#12 in the above) - make a note of it. 

Load the icon with the following command:

Get-CtxIcon -FileName c:\icons\custom.ico | New-BrokerIcon

If you re-issue the Get-BrokerIcon command above, you should see the new ID (#13).


We now need to assign the icon to one or more delivery groups. Let's see what icons are currently assigned to the delivery groups:

Get-BrokerDesktopGroup | Select name, IconUid


Unless you've already made changes, most delivery groups will probably be using icon #1. To change the icon for a specific delivery group, issue the following command:

Set-BrokerDesktopGroup -name “Remote PCs”   -IconUid 13 (the new icon added above)


You could replace the icon for any of the other delivery groups, or you could load and assign a separate icon for each of the delivery groups.

Back on the StoreFront server, you will need to issue the following commands (make sure that the StoreFront console is closed before issuing these commands):

$store = Get-STFStoreService -SiteId 1
Set-STFStoreService -StoreService $store -SubstituteDesktopImage $false -Confirm:$false

Don’t forget to propagate your StoreFront changes to the rest of the StoreFront servers in the group.

Sam Jacobs is the Director of Technology at Newtek Technology Solutions (formerly IPM, the longest standing Citrix Platinum Partner on the East Coast). With more than 40 years of IT consulting, Sam is a Citrix NetScaler, StoreFront, and Web Interface customization and integration expert. He holds Microsoft Azure Developer and Citrix CCP-N certifications, and was a frequent contributor to the CUGC CTP blog. He has presented advanced breakout sessions at Citrix Synergy for 6 years on ADC (NetScaler) and StoreFront customizations and integration. He is one of the top Citrix Support Forum contributors, and has earned industry praise for the tools he has developed to make NetScaler, StoreFront, and Web Interface easier to manage for administrators and more intuitive for end users. Sam became a Citrix Technology Professional (CTP) in 2015, and can be reached at sjacobsCTP@gmail.com.