Incomplete & inaccurate platform-specific notes. # MacOS Icon The format for desktop apps is [.icns][icns]. AFAIK, the format is not open (even though it had been [reverse-engineered][icns-re]), and I couldn't find any 3rd party tool that'd fully support it. The easiest way for creating icon file is either via `Xcode`, or by using built-in `iconutil` command that ships with MacOS. The steps are provided below: $ sips -s format png --resampleWidth 1024 source.png --out /path/to/icons/icon_512x512@2x.png $ sips -s format png --resampleWidth 512 source.png --out /path/to/icons/icon_512x512.png $ sips -s format png --resampleWidth 256 source.png --out /path/to/icons/icon_256x256.png $ sips -s format png --resampleWidth 128 source.png --out /path/to/icons/icon_128x128.png $ sips -s format png --resampleWidth 64 source.png --out /path/to/icons/icon_32x32@2x.png $ sips -s format png --resampleWidth 32 source.png --out /path/to/icons/icon_32x32.png $ sips -s format png --resampleWidth 16 source.png --out /path/to/icons/icon_16x16.png $ iconutil -c icns /path/to/icons -o icon.icns [icns]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Icon_Image_format [icns-re]: https://www.macdisk.com/maciconen.php#RLE # Windows Icon Terminology: - coff: precursor to pe format (portable executable). pe is an extension of coff. - manifest: xml file with platform requirements needed during runtime - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/sbscs/application-manifests - https://www.samlogic.net/articles/manifest.htm - rc: dsl file that describes the application metadata & resources - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/win32/menurc/about-resource-files - https://github.com/josephspurrier/goversioninfo/blob/master/testdata/rc/versioninfo.rc (sample rc) Windows Icons are directly embedded to the binary. To do so one needs to provide `.syso` file prior to compiling Go code, which will be passed to the linker. So, basically `.syso` is any [object file][obj-file] that the linker understands. More info here: [ticket][syso-ticket] & [commit][syso-commit]. Note to self: running `go build main.go` [won't embed][syso-quirk] .syso file if it isn't located in a package directory. Tools to create `.syso` files: - [windres][windres]: ships with mingw (gnu tools for windows) - [rsrc][rsrc]: written in Go, wasn't considered at the time due to the critical bug with icon alignment - [goversioninfo][goversioninfo]: rsrc wrapper with manifest file creation via json [obj-file]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_file [syso-linker]: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/23278#issuecomment-354567634 [syso-ticket]: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/1552 [syso-commit]: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b0996334 [syso-quirk]: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/16090 [mingw]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinGW [coff]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COFF [windres]: https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/binutils/windres.html [rsrs]: https://github.com/akavel/rsrc [rsrc-bug]: https://github.com/akavel/rsrc/issues/12 [goversioninfo]: github.com/josephspurrier/goversioninfo [winicon-guide]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/vis-icons#size-requirements [res-vs-coff]: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MS_resource_compiler [versioninfo-resource]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/menurc/versioninfo-resource