I wanted to share what I've discovered during my research into why SOME Steam Apps only give "blank" icons when you save an icon to your desktop for use without the Steam UI.

Steam "shortcuts" are not actually Windows LNK files, they're URL files. I'm not sure why Valve moved to those, but they did so quite a few years ago. They provide a few advantages over standard LNK shortcuts, but not many, in my opinion. But maybe this plays into Steam's incorporation of CHROME as the main engine of their service.

Anyway, there are very often issues with the icon for the app not appearing when you create a "desktop shortcut." Sometimes, the issues are even greater... for example, the program in question actually launches, not the program itself, but my PRINTERS interface! (sigh)

The program works just fine when launched from within Steam, but not from the created shortcut.

This is NOT related to Steam, exactly... but rather to Windows and the way that they've altered how the URL extension is handled since they released "Edge."

See, "Edge" hasn't been adopted as "the only browser to use" by too many of their customers, so they've altered how the URL file type is handled in Windows. In the registry, if you dig into the info about this, you'll find that there are three "Handlers" for the URL file format. "Open," "Print" and "Print To." The two latter ones exist for reasons I can't even imagine, but no doubt in SOME circumstances that comes in handy.

But, as it turns out, if you do not have "edge" setup as your primary browser, this breaks the URL handling. So, it just defaults to "print" since the "open" option won't work.

You'll note, also, that there is no easy way to reassign URL files to another program. However, if you reassign them to, say, Firefox... they'll work again. It ONLY fails if you use the "internet browser" assignment (the only one available in the windows settings page, apart from "notepad!) and use another browser besides "Edge."

I blame Steam for this, more than anyone else, because they had NO reason to change from "LINK" type shortcuts to the "URL" shortcuts, really, apart from "someone thought it'd be kewl."

The best way around this? Create your own shortcuts. It's a pain, but it gives you full control once you do.

What I just did to make this program work again? I use a program called "bulk file renamer" to attach a ".txt" suffix to every file currently ending with a ".url" suffix. This makes the files, which are simply text files, readable and editable. But Windows 10 or 11 blocks you from doing ANYTHING to a "URL" file.

Once you have this done, you can see what's in the file itself.

For the program I was just playing around with, "Universe Sandbox," the actual file text reads as follows:

[{000214A0-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
Prop3=19,0
[InternetShortcut]
IDList=
IconIndex=0
URL=steam://rungameid/72200
IconFile=F:\Steam\steam\games\b3f53a0ef402f966ac12566a0f42f1cc5943d81c.ico

The ONLY parts of that which you actually need, as far as I can tell, are the URL itself and the "IconFile."

Create a shortcut to "Steam.exe." It'll work just fine, as normal.

Modify that shortcut, by adding " -applaunch " and then the number from the URL.

For example:

F:\Steam\steam.exe -applaunch 72200

(Note, this is all Steam USED to do. All these issues started when they decided to switch over to "URLs" instead of regular shortcut links.)

You can then assign the shortcut the proper icon, as found in the "IconFile" seen above, or any other icon of your choice.

Note: You CAN just link directly to the game executable, too. However, this will not automatically launch Steam... at least not in most cases... so the Steam DRM system will not work. If you've already got steam running, the program will launch, but if not, it will usually fail until you start Steam on your own. But by doing the above, Steam launches normally, and then the game launches. And everything will just work.

I really, really wish Valve hadn't "switched over" to using URLs. Yeah, this worked just fine until Microshaft decided to screw around with the URL handling routine. Now, at least for me, every existing STeam "shortcut," and every NEW STeam "shortcut," is broken. Clicking on it opens my printer dialogue.

I didn't break anything. I didn't do anything wrong. Microsoft is punishing me for not using Edge as my "only browser." And Steam is playing right along with them.

Anyway, as long as Valve doesn't disable the command-line option I'm using to create these new shortcuts, I can still run all my Steam games from shortcuts. It's just more of a pain than it ought to be.

I hope this helps all the other folks out there experiencing this same pain.