Custom titles for Windows 7 Jump List Recent items - windows-7

Question

Quickie question: I'm toying with some of the new taskbar APIs in Windows 7 and have gotten Recent Items on my Apps jumplist to show up, but I would like to display them under a different title than the filename (most files my app will be opening will have very similar names). I don't see any way to do that with the IShellItem interface, though. Would I have to use custom categories and IShellLinks to accomplish this?
For reference, my current code looks like this:
void AddRecentApp(const wchar_t* path, const wchar_t* title /* Can I even use this? */ ) {
HRESULT hres;
hres = CoInitialize(NULL);
IShellItem* recentItem;
hres = SHCreateItemFromParsingName(path, NULL, IID_PPV_ARGS(&recentItem));
if(SUCCEEDED(hres)) {
SHARDAPPIDINFO recentItemInfo;
recentItemInfo.pszAppID = MY_APP_USER_MODEL_ID;
recentItemInfo.psi = recentItem;
SHAddToRecentDocs(SHARD_APPIDINFO, &recentItemInfo);
recentItem->Release();
}
}

Answer 1

Figured it out. IShellItems are just a representation of a file, so they only will provide that file's information (no custom title, etc.) An IShellLink is essentially a shortcut, and is much more flexible in terms of display and actions taken when launched, so are more appropriate in this situation. Here's my new code:
void AddRecentApp(const wchar_t* path, const wchar_t* title) {
HRESULT hres;
hres = CoInitialize(NULL);
// Shell links give us more control over how the item is displayed and run
IShellLink* shell_link;
hres = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_ShellLink, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_PPV_ARGS(&shell_link));
if(SUCCEEDED(hres)) {
// Set up the basic link properties
shell_link->SetPath(path);
shell_link->SetArguments(L"--some-command-line-here"); // command line to execute when item is opened here!
shell_link->SetDescription(title); // This is what shows in the tooltip
shell_link->SetIconLocation(L"/path/to/desired/icon", 0); // can be an icon file or binary
// Open up the links property store and change the title
IPropertyStore* prop_store;
hres = shell_link->QueryInterface(IID_PPV_ARGS(&prop_store));
if(SUCCEEDED(hres)) {
PROPVARIANT pv;
InitPropVariantFromString(title, &pv);
// Set the title property.
prop_store->SetValue(PKEY_Title, pv); // THIS is where the displayed title is actually set
PropVariantClear(&pv);
// Save the changes we made to the property store
prop_store->Commit();
prop_store->Release();
}
// The link must persist in the file system somewhere, save it here.
IPersistFile* persist_file;
hres = shell_link->QueryInterface(IID_PPV_ARGS(&persist_file));
if(SUCCEEDED(hres)) {
hres = persist_file->Save(L"/link/save/directory", TRUE);
persist_file->Release();
}
// Add the link to the recent documents list
SHARDAPPIDINFOLINK app_id_info_link;
app_id_info_link.pszAppID = MY_APP_USER_MODEL_ID;
app_id_info_link.psl = shell_link;
SHAddToRecentDocs(SHARD_APPIDINFOLINK, &app_id_info_link);
shell_link->Release();
}
}