- Mac Os X Icon Sets
- How To Change Mac Icon
- Mac Os Change Icon For Applications Mac
- Mac Application Icon Missing
- Mac Os Change Icon For Applications Windows 10
- Mac Os Change Icon
Mac OS X is notorious for being beautiful. Every vertical and horizontal line is just perfect... until you have that one application's icon which sticks out like a sore thumb. Obviously everyone has different aesthetic preferences, and this is not meant to hurt anyone's feelings.
It has always been possible to replace these icons by hand. The steps generally go like this:
Mac Os X Icon Sets
Change Application Icon in Mac OS. The application icon is actually an icon file with.icns extension stored in the application. To change the icon of the application, you need to find out the existing icon file and then replace it with the desired one. For example, here I am changing the Firefox icon to some other icon. You can also change the icon just as you would normally for any other folder or file in Mac OS X: Copy the image you want to use as your icon. Ideally it should be 512x512 already. Choose Get Info on the file/folder/app in Finder; Click on the Icon and you'll notice a blue outline on the icon - now press Command-V or choose Paste from the Edit. Image2icon is the easiest way to create your own mac icons and customize your folders and files. Version 2.0 provides: ## Image to Icon Conversion ## It’s easy as pie: drop an image to Image2icon, then drop a file or folder apply the icon.
- MacOS Big Sur - Replacements Icons. Check out the open beta for a bookmarking service I'm working on, WebBites.io. All feedback is appreciated, you can do that @elrumo on Twitter. Replacement icons for popular apps in the style of macOS Big Sur.
- You can adjust the size of desktop icons in macOS or OS X from the Finder by going to View-Show View Options (Command-J). You can increase/decrease the icon size as well as the text size for each icon.
- Find an icon you actually want (@2x too for retina)
- Download it, but it is probably a PNG
- Convert it to an
.icns
file - Find the Application that you want to replace the icon on in Finder
- Open the inspector (
⌘ + I
) - Quite literally drag (or copy-paste) the
.icns
onto the application icon
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/1/8/2/118216729/567814815.png)
If you think I am joking, check Apple's own help page for changing Application icons. The downside to this approach (aside from being completely manual) is that application updates often overwrite your beautiful custom icons! Then you end up clicking around Finder to make everything pretty again. To an automation-obsessed person like myself, this is unacceptable.
How To Change Mac Icon
Replacing the Icons
In case you may be unaware, 'applications' in OS X are actually folders. Apple calls them 'packages', but seriously, they are just folders. You can
cd
into them:If we take a dive into that folder, inside the
Info.plist
there will be an entry for CFBundleIconFile
and CFBundleTypeIconFile
CFBundleIconFile
- the icon that will show up in Finder and the DockCFBundleTypeIconFile
- the icon for others files to be opened by this app (not all applications will have this file)
Mac Os Change Icon For Applications Mac
In Atom, the
CFBundleIconFile
is atom.icns
, but it could be named any other file. The name refers to the name of the file in the Contents/Resources
folder. Sure enough, it is there:Great! Now we can just replace the icon using some basic unix commands. Grab the icon you want and put it somewhere safe. I personally use
~/.custom-icons
, but you could use any path - just be sure to update the script below.I get a lot of my icons off Dribbble (thanks great designers!), and I personally use this one for my Atom icon:
This will replace the icon, but you have to restart your computer for the changes to take effect... or do you?
Forcing a Reload
By default, application icons are loaded into the cache at boot time. There are a few techniques for forcing a reload of that icon cache on the Internet, but there is actually a much easier approach - simply touch the app:
I actually have no clue why this works, but the computer scientist in me says that something about changing the lstime of the file causes the cache to be invalidated. Now you just need to restart Finder and the Dock to pick up the changes:
Now we can easily script the whole thing! Here is my complete script:
Mac Application Icon Missing
One thing to note: if the application corresponding to the icon you are replacing is currently running, you will need to quit that application before running the script. My script used to Force-Quit the application, but that turned out to be a bad idea for an editor.
Mac Os Change Icon For Applications Windows 10
Conclusion
Mac Os Change Icon
Hopefully this post helps you automate icon replacements, and, again, this is in no way intended to make the Atom developers feel bad (or any of the other 15 application icons I replace). When new app updates happen, just rerun the script and your icons will be great again!