Most web searches for free icons will lead you astray. You will often end up at sites that offer a few free icons, just to show off their paid icon collections. Other times you’ll find that the icons have license restrictions that don’t allow you to use them online or for business use. Do you need a good source for free icons?

I discovered that the free icons at the Open Icon Library are not only free, but are free to use anywhere for any purpose. Here’s what they say about their collection:

A free and open Icon collection. Over 5000 Unique Icons. Free for anyone to use on you computer, website or any other project. The library is not a theme. Its a centralized source for icons to cover all your needs. The goal is to cover all common apps, operating systems, mimetypes, devices, and country flags.

You can easily browse the Open Icon Gallery by using the three main categories of Flags, Icons and Pictograms. If you don’t have time to look through them all online, you can always download the entire collection to your computer. There’s also an additional collection of icons specifically designed for use on web pages.

If you need even more free images, be sure to check out these pages:

IconArchive, Christmas Icons,  OpenClipArt, MorgueFile and Wallpapers.

Thanksgiving usually kicks in the holiday season, and people start getting into an early Christmas mood. We have been covering several Christmas goodies in the past and will continue to do so to make sure that you are ready for the season.

You might want to start out with the Christmas spirit by using some Free Christmas icons on your blog. In this post, you will find some really nice and free Christmas icons that you can download and use freely on your blog/website of desktop.

Icon Dock Free Christmas Holiday Icons

A set of Holiday Christmas Icons available in PSD, GIF, PNG, ICO, and EPS format. Download Christmas Holiday Icons.

Icon Archive Free Christmas Icon Pack

Previously mentioned Icon Archive, has a huge list of Christmas Icon packs you can download for free. Download from Icon Archive.

Clever Icons Free Christmas Icon Pack

Clever Icons has some high quality Christmas Icons you can put to good use. Download from Clever Icons.

Dry Icons Free Christmas 2009 Icon Pack

Dry Icons has some really nice looking icons for Christmas. The snow effects just make it look a bit nicer. Download from Dry Icons.

Free Icons Free Download Christmas Icon Pack

Free Icons Download has a set of 13 high quality Christmas Icons you can download and use for free. Download from Free Icons.

Designus Free Christmas Icon Pack

Designus has a set of basic Christmas icon pack for free download. Download from Designus.

These are just few of the icons packs which provide users with high quality and free Christmas Icon Packs. We will keep this list updated to include more Christmas icon packs as we come across them.

In the past we have told you how to change default Windows desktop icons, using a inbuilt feature in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. But what if you want to apply a new icon pack to your system?

Also Read: Browse and Download Free High Quality Icons

Icon Tweaker is a excellent freeware that will allow you to update the icons used on your Windows XP system with a different icon pack.

Icon Tweaker comes loaded with several built-in icon packs. In addition to that you can also download and install icon packs from the internet.If you are feeling adventurous, you can create your own icon packs using the software.

If you think you messed up something or want to go back to using the original icons, you can do that with a single click. Icon Tweaker only works with Windows XP and lower PCs.

Download IconTweaker

Most of you are familiar with icons since you see them every time you use a PC. An ICO file is an image file that contains the small picture that you see as an icon. Icons are usually associated with files or actions on your PC. Icons make it easier to identify file types by simply looking at the icon.

How Can I Open (view) an ICO file?

If you wish to open or view the little picture in an ICO file, double clicking an ICO file will most often open in the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (XP) or Windows Photo Viewer (Vista, Win7) so that you can see it in more detail.

If you have a collection of ICO files, I’ve found that it’s often just as easy to open the folder that the ICO files are in then select the “Thumbnail” view or the “Tiles” view in WinXP or the large icon view in Vista/Win7.

If double clicking on an ICO file does not result in it opening up in a viewer, you can restore it’s default actions. You can also find out how to chose your own default application to openICO files.

One more thing I’ll share with you before moving on is that you can download tons of free high quality icons from the net.

How Can I Edit an ICO File?

On most PCs, the default editor for an ICO (icon) file is the ever present MS Paint application. Right clicking on an ICO file and choosing Editwill usually open an icon in MS Paint.

MS Paint is a very basic graphics editor and it is definitely not a good application for editing icons. Paint’s biggest problem is that it cannot set transparent areas. I have also seen cases where an ICO file saved by Paint is not recognized as an icon by other applications.

Here I have listed some of the best free icon editors:

Greenfish

IcoFX

@icon sushi

IconArt

Portable Icon Editors

Gimp

Here are a few tutorials showing you how to use icon editors:

Creating large icons with Greenfish

IcoFX video tutorial #1

IcoFX video tutorial #2

Tutorials from the author of IcoFX

Create large Vista/Win7 icons with icon sushi

IconArt video tutorial

Creating Icons with Gimp

45 icon design tutorials

How Can I Create My Own Ico Libraries?

Icons are normally thought of as ICO files, but they are also included in icon libraries in the form of EXE, DLL or ICL files. There are quite a few programs that will allow you to create or manage existing icon libraries on your computer. Below are links to two icon editors that I mentioned earlier which handle libraries nicely. This makes them an “all-in-one” tool for dealing with icons.

Greenfish Icon Editor

IcoFX – IcoFX library tutorial

Do you have more questions about icons and ICO files?

How Can I Restore the Default ICO File Behavior?

How Can I Change Windows Default Desktop Icons?

How Can I Change the Icon for a File Extension or File Type?

Browse And Download Tons Of Free High Quality Icons at IconArchive

We have previously mentioned a number of websites to download free icons. These resources include tons of high-quality free icons, but sometimes what you want is not readily available. If that is the case and you want to create your own icon, there is a web app that will come in very handy.

iConvert is an application that converts regular images into icon files, free of cost. Simply upload any image file with a PNG, JPG, TIF, BMP or any other commonly used image format, and iConvert will convert that into an icon file for you.

Once converted, you can download your icon as a .ico file which is a windows native icon file, .hqx or .icns files which are icon files for MAC OS or download them as simple .png to use with Linux.  The converted .png file is available for download in a number of different sizes.

Windows Vista definitely has some good looking icons and many people would like to get their hands on the icon pack. If you are one of them, a deviantart user has released a new Windows Vista icon pack which you can use in your projects free of cost.

The designer has segregated the icons into different folders like Control Panel, Files, Games, Programs, Printers and other relevant categories to make it easier for you to find your favorite icons.

Related: Browse and Download 1000s of Free High Quality Icons for Free

Download Windows Vista Icons

Are you looking for free icons to be used on your website, or are you looking for high quality for your desktop. Browsing and searching them on the Internet is not that easy, so having a place to find all the icons in one place definitely helps.

Related: 6 Places to download high quality wallpapers.

IconArchive is definitely one of the best places to find high quality icons in one place for websites and your desktop including Windows icons, Mac icons and Linux icons.

The best part of IconArchive is that, all of the icons are neatly categorized making it easier to browse and find the type of icons you are looking for.

IconArchive currently hosts over 19,400 icons in 707 sets from 169 icon authors. Icons can be used for Windows (XP, Vista, etc.), Macintosh (OSX, OS) and Linux (as PNG Files). The list is bound to grow with newer icons being submitted everyday.

So the next time you want to find some icons, head to IconArchive and you will definitely find the icons you are looking for.

IconArchive