This package provides a minor mode dired-icon-mode to display an icon for each file type in dired buffers. Currently only MacOS and systems which run GTK 3, such as GNU/Linux, GNU/kFreeBSD and FreeBSD, are fully supported (pre-requisition for GTK systems: PyGObject for Python 3 and optionally the file command). On other systems, currently only directory icons are displayed.

dired-icon can be installed from the MELPA repository. Follow the instructions to set up MELPA and then run package-install RET dired-icon RET to install.

dired-icon can be installed via el-get. Follow the instructions to set up el-get and then run el-get-install RET dired-icon RET to install.

Download this package and add the following to your ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/path/to/dired-icon")
(load "dired-icon.el")

To display the icons in a dired buffer, simply call M-x dired-icon-mode inside a dired buffer. To always display the file icons in dired buffers, add the following to your ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.d/init.el:

(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook 'dired-icon-mode)