Hi,
With Pixinsight 1.9.3 and earlier, I’d drag my stored Process Icon file (just once) onto the PI icon on the taskbar of Windows 10 and from then on when I right-click on that icon, the process icons open along with Pixinsight.
This can’t be done with Windows 11.
Is there another way to do this? Google says to add a line to the PI startup file, but this cannot be done either.
Jerry
I’m assuming it still works with the newest versions of pixinsight, but I haven’t upgraded yet to check. Right click and save your process icons, and then save it to the desktop. Use the icon on the desktop that you saved to open pixinsight and it’ll open with the process icons.
Quinn Groessl · May 26, 2026 at 11:25 PM
I’m assuming it still works with the newest versions of pixinsight, but I haven’t upgraded yet to check. Right click and save your process icons, and then save it to the desktop. Use the icon on the desktop that you saved to open pixinsight and it’ll open with the process icons.
Yes, it works the same. If your saved project file with the icons isn’t in your desktop folder, you can also make a shortcut to that project file on your desktop and then just double click on it to open PI with your icons.
This is what I use:
I create a pinned icon for PI on the taskbar then edit it and use the following in the target and start in fields. This directly opens my saved project with all the customizations I have saved in the project.
Target (Saved project file path):
"G:\Astrophotography\Pixinsight Projects\Mono.pxiproject\project.xosm"
Start in (folder in which the above saved file is located):
"G:\Astrophotography\Pixinsight Projects\Mono.pxiproject"
📷 image.png
Quinn Groessl · May 26, 2026, 11:25 PM
Right click and save your process icons, and then save it to the desktop. Use the icon on the desktop that you saved to open pixinsight and it’ll open with the process icons
I have my Desktop shortcut point to the saved process icon file and that shortcut has survived multiple re-installs and the (2) updates to the latest version.
Thanks everyone for responding.
Windows 11 doesn't allow pinning a file (i.e. Process Icons) to an app that is on the taskbar as Windows 10 did so the only way I can see is to put the Process Icon file on the desktop. Kind of defeats the purpose of having the taskbar as I've always launched apps with the file I'm working on directly from the taskbar.
Jerry Gerber · May 27, 2026, 10:22 PM
Kind of defeats the purpose of having the taskbar
somewhat true. But I think you can still make the taskbar icon useful: open your process icon file by double clicking it. If you right-click on the PixInsight Icon in your taskbar, it shows the recently used files. If you now hover over the process icon file, you can pin it to the top of the list. You can start PI selectively by right-clicking the taskbar icon and start whatever icons-set you need…
Robin Bosshard · May 27, 2026, 11:48 PM
Jerry Gerber · May 27, 2026, 10:22 PM
Kind of defeats the purpose of having the taskbar
somewhat true. But I think you can still make the taskbar icon useful: open your process icon file by double clicking it. If you right-click on the PixInsight Icon in your taskbar, it shows the recently used files. If you now hover over the process icon file, you can pin it to the top of the list. You can start PI selectively by right-clicking the taskbar icon and start whatever icons-set you need…
HI Robin,
I'm not sure I'm understanding. I know I can do what you're suggesting in Windows 10 but in Windows 11 I'm unable to pin files to the app's icon that's pinned to the taskbar.
Pixinsight has closed their user forum except for bug reports, but I don't think this is a bug in PI
It's not just Pixinsight, it's true for all apps with Windows 11.
Hi Jerry,
I used the process described in this tutorial (Link). Only thing I have to after Pixinsight update is copy two saved files again to Program Files>Pixinsight>etc>startup.
It is a little bit more work but it is kind of permanent.
Cheers!
https://www.awesomeastro.com/tutorials/how-to-load-pixinsight-icons-startup/
[I think I’m going crazy here…post deleted]
Every time I saw this post it bothered me cause I was sure there was a way, and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of asking Gemini in the first place, but I got your answer and a few others that didn’t work for me. Anyway, the one that did work:
Before anything else, if you don’t have your file extensions showing, enable that. Open up file explorer, press view, go down to show, and make sure file name extensions is checked. After that do the following:
In file explorer, navigate to a folder you can put a file and not care that it’s there. Then right click, go down to new, and select new text document.
Rename it to whatever you want but instead of .txt at the end, change it to .exe
Pin it to the taskbar by dragging it down to the taskbar and dropping it.
Shift+right click the icon on the taskbar, click properties, change the path to your process icons path. Mine is saved on the destop so it’s “C:\Users\Quinn\Desktop\Pixinsight.xpsm” but yours will be different.
The rest is optional, but to change the icon in the properties menu select change icon
Click Browse and navigate to programfiles\pixinsight\bin
Scroll down and select Pixinsight.ico, press ok, apply, ok.
Ctrl+Alt+del or however you want to get task manager open.
In the processes tab either find or search for Windows Explorer.
Select Windows Explorer and click Restart Task
That’s it. Gemini claimed I could delete the original text file I created, but when I restarted Windows Explorer it disappeared. It breaks if you move the file too,, so put it somewhere you don’t mind a file hanging out. Gemini also made up other methods, but none of them seemed to work.
The “solution” I posted…well…just wasn’t a solution. Today, no files in the recently used file list of the PixInsight Icon in my taskbar does open PI (would have sworn it did last night), now that only works if PI is already running (maybe I had ghost instance running last night…). I want my Win10 back…
Thanks everyone but I'm not going to spend any more time on this.
The Windows 11 taskbar simply doesn't support pinning app files to the app icons on the taskbar. Why Microsoft removed this useful shortcut is anybody's guess.
All of my apps on the Windows 11 taskbar don't have this feature as they did in Windows 10. It just clutters the desktop with data files and shortcuts, I see absolutely no advantage to removing this feature.