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:
- If your using Eclipse, you can export a project as a Mac OS X Application Bundle and specify an.icns file to use as an icon. In Eclipse, go to FileExport and choose the 'Mac OS X Application Bundle' option inside the 'Other' directory. Click the next button. Then you'll be presented with the 'Application.
- Sometimes, apps icon change but we like the older icon. Thankfully, it’s very easy to change the app icon in Mac. In Mac OS, all the applications have.app extension but it ships in the form of a zip file. So you can easily check the contents of any application, find out the icon file, and replace it.
- Change Mac OS Application Icon. Posted on April 2, 2020 April 2, 2020 by Joel. You can use the following instructions to update the icon for any application.
- Find an icon you actually want (@2x too for retina)
- Download it, but it is probably a PNG
- Convert it to an
.icnsfile - Find the Application that you want to replace the icon on in Finder
- Open the inspector (
⌘ + I) - Quite literally drag (or copy-paste) the
.icnsonto the application icon
Sometimes, apps icon change but we like the older icon. Thankfully, it’s very easy to change the app icon in Mac. In Mac OS, all the applications have.app extension but it ships in the form of a zip file. So you can easily check the contents of any application, find out the icon file, and replace it. One of the best ways to customize your Mac and make it your own is to change your app and folder icons. With just a few simple changes, you can have things uniquely your own. There are a lot of different icons you can change in OS X. The easiest ones to change are your applications and folders but, we warn you, it can be habit forming.
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.
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)
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. Youtube music download for mac. 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:
Change App Icon Mac
Now we can easily script the whole thing! Here is my complete script:
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.
Conclusion
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!
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:
- Find an icon you actually want (@2x too for retina)
- Download it, but it is probably a PNG
- Convert it to an
.icnsfile - Find the Application that you want to replace the icon on in Finder
- Open the inspector (
⌘ + I) - Quite literally drag (or copy-paste) the
.icnsonto the application icon
How to download music for free on my kindle. 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.
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)
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:
Mac Icon Download
Now we can easily script the whole thing! Here is my complete script:
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.
Free Icons For Mac
Conclusion
Mac Os Setting 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!