Injecting Windows executable metadata after packaging

Executables created with pkg are based on a Node.js binary and, by default, inherit its embedded metadata — version number, product name, company name, icon, description. This can be misleading or unpolished in distributed applications.

There are two ways to customise the metadata of the resulting .exe:

1. Use a custom Node.js binary with your own metadata already embedded — see Custom Node.js binary.
2. Post-process the generated executable using resedit, a Node.js-compatible tool for modifying Windows executable resources. This allows injecting correct version info, icons, copyright, and more.

This page focuses on the second approach.

WARNING

Other tools may corrupt the executable, resulting in runtime errors such as Pkg: Error reading from file. — resedit has proven to work reliably with pkg-generated binaries.

Node.js API

import * as ResEdit from 'resedit';
import * as fs from 'fs';
import * as path from 'path';

// Set your inputs:
const exePath = 'dist/my-tool.exe'; // Path to the generated executable
const outputPath = exePath; // Overwrite or use a different path
const version = '1.2.3'; // Your application version

const lang = 1033; // en-US
const codepage = 1200; // Unicode

const exeData = fs.readFileSync(exePath);
const exe = ResEdit.NtExecutable.from(exeData);
const res = ResEdit.NtExecutableResource.from(exe);

const viList = ResEdit.Resource.VersionInfo.fromEntries(res.entries);
const vi = viList[0];

const [major, minor, patch] = version.split('.');
vi.setFileVersion(Number(major), Number(minor), Number(patch), 0, lang);
vi.setProductVersion(Number(major), Number(minor), Number(patch), 0, lang);

vi.setStringValues(
  { lang, codepage },
  {
    FileDescription: 'ACME CLI Tool',
    ProductName: 'ACME Application',
    CompanyName: 'ACME Corporation',
    ProductVersion: version,
    FileVersion: version,
    OriginalFilename: path.basename(exePath),
    LegalCopyright: `© ${new Date().getFullYear()} ACME Corporation`,
  },
);

vi.outputToResourceEntries(res.entries);
res.outputResource(exe);
const newBinary = exe.generate();

fs.writeFileSync(outputPath, Buffer.from(newBinary));

Command line

resedit also supports command-line usage. This is convenient for simple use cases in build scripts.

The following examples inject an icon and metadata into the executable dist/bin/app_with_metadata.exe, based on the built file dist/bin/app.exe.

PowerShell

npx resedit dist/bin/app.exe dist/bin/app_with_metadata.exe `
  --icon 1,dist/favicon.ico `
  --company-name "ACME Corporation" `
  --file-description "ACME CLI Tool" `
  --product-name "ACME Application" `
  --file-version 1.2.3.4

bash

npx resedit dist/bin/app.exe dist/bin/app_with_metadata.exe \
  --icon 1,dist/favicon.ico \
  --company-name "ACME Corporation" \
  --file-description "ACME CLI Tool" \
  --product-name "ACME Application" \
  --file-version 1.2.3.4

TIP

This is especially useful when cross-compiling Windows executables from Linux or macOS using pkg.

See the resedit package on npm for additional examples and full API documentation.