How to Change Icons in Mac OS X

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By Lincoln Armstrong

Photo courtesy Sebas

There are some icons in Mac OS X that are a little tougher than others to change, but most of the desktop icons, especially those for user documents and directories, are easy to change.

Mac OS X provides a context menu for each desktop icon displayed by the Finder application that includes a menu item called "Get Info." It is usually the second item on the menu. Get info displays a rather comprehensive list of configurable information about a document or a folder, and also displays the document or directory's icon at the top.

This is where you can change an icon, believe it or not. By selecting the icon in the "Get Info" window, with a mouse left-click, it will cause a blue border to appear. Using the keyboard combination of [Apple Key ] + C (the standard copy text command) you can "copy" the icon. Then, by opening another Get Info window and highlighting the icon in the same way, you can use the standard paste text command, [Apple Key ] + V, to paste the icon for the other document.

Comments

McLovin 3 years ago

Is there a way to change the standard icons all at the same time?

Joe 2 years ago

For some reason I cannot change certain icons. I'm not sure if it's because of the file type of the images or the applications. The only application icon that I could change was FireFox. I couldn't change iTunes or iChat. Does anyone know why I'm having this problem?

Manni 2 years ago

Is there not a faster way to do this?! This takes ages, since you have to do it seperatly for each item! +.+

dnazz 2 years ago

thank you!

Willem 2 years ago

I changed some icons in my home folder, but would like to change them back.. I know this isn't the problem, the thing is.. The shortcuts in my navigation aren't changed back to the default ones, but they show a tiny version of the folder icon instead.

How can I change back to default settings??

Thank you!

thomas30 profile image

thomas30 18 months ago

fine..............

J4M13BCFC123 18 months ago

Follow this link for a youtube tutorial and please subscribe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zVCmt1OzZ0

Rob Brown 17 months ago

I had a little trouble changing my iTunes icon using this tutorial. I found out that Apple marked the new iTunes icon as "Read Only" after some research, I posted my results here: http://RobIsIT.com/a3

Brett 17 months ago

why can't i change safari?

phillip a 16 months ago

changing the itunes icon is tricky...is there a way?

Simplesmente Lila 16 months ago

very easy,just unlock the padlock on the bottom of the finder menu and change it to read and write.

do this ;right click on itunes,choose show in finder-get inf-on the bottom of the window click on the padlock and unlock it to read and write. then now you can paste anything on it then save.

FlyingDutchMan 14 months ago

Thanks to the poster above me, i finally worked it out.

Such a simple solution, but i never thought of it!

Thanks again, Simplesmente Lila!

scott 12 months ago

to change the itunes icon you have to google how to do it. i did it but i cannot remember how. you need to find an icon online that you want to use.

then you have to close finder and run it as a root user i believe.

finder is what is inhibiting the icon change.

swillah 10 months ago

thanks!

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