Icons are everywhere on our computer screens, yet most users barely notice them. For designers and enthusiasts, however, they are a rich source of inspiration. BeCyIconGrabber is a simple, portable utility that makes it incredibly easy to extract icons from a variety of files, including the high-resolution icons found in recent Windows versions.
A Look Inside Icon Design
While they might seem like simple visual cues, there’s far more work behind each icon and each font than meets the eye. Not long ago, we shared the story of Susan Kare, who designed the original icons and fonts for the Apple Macintosh. It all began with a limited number of pixels and a lot of creativity, but the best part is that anyone can follow the same path. Icon and interface design is highly valued today, especially in the mobile space with its small screens and extreme resolutions. Hand-drawn sketches and experimentation are essential, but if you want to study finished icons up close, there’s an ideal app at your fingertips.
BeCyIconGrabber: Your Icon Extraction Tool
Meet BeCyIconGrabber. It comes in two flavors: one with a traditional installer and a fully portable version. In fact, it takes up less than 400 kilobytes and, as far as we can tell, has no external dependencies. All you need to do to discover and extract icons is specify a folder containing files—these can be classic .ico and .cur variants (the program also supports cursors), or directly .exe and .dll files. Windows’ System32 folder is an excellent starting point, where you’ll find several files with high-resolution icons, displaying 256 pixels per side. Once you’ve found the icon you want, the rest is just right-clicking on it and saving it as a .bmp or .png with transparent backgrounds.
Final Thoughts
Beyond that, there’s not much more to say about BeCyIconGrabber. Its portable profile makes it a candidate for any USB drive, though technically it’s not a maintenance app, so I’m not sure it makes sense to keep a copy there. It works well with 64-bit editions of Windows, and antivirus programs haven’t raised any red flags. In short: if you need icons, BeCyIconGrabber is your ally.
