Customise Finder icons
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Apple’s folder and application icons are pretty good (and much bigger and more graphic in Snow Leopard, which adds a size slider to the bottom of Finder windows for icon view), but sometimes you just want to change them, or perhaps you desire more distinctive folder icons for certain tasks.
Copy some
There are custom icon makers all over the place, but you can often download sets for free from sources like FastIcon, or check out Mischa McLachlan’s cool Kiwiana set, among others.
Download some icons you like – they are tiny files – and expand the archive you downloaded by double-cicking on it. Then, in the Finder, click once on an icon you like the look of (it’s actually an empty folder, so clicking twice will just open it to reveal ... nothing). Now choose Get Info from the File menu (Command - i) and click on the folder icon in the top left of the info window. It will manifest a slight blue outline showing it’s selected. Choose Copy from the edit menu (or Command - c), click once on a folder whose icon you want to change, choose Get Info as before, click on the standard folder icon in the top left of the Get Info window and choose paste. Voila.
If you ever get sick of an icon you added to a folder, just do another Get Info on its folder (this also works for changing file icons, by the way), select the folder icon at top left and hit the delete key – it changes back to standard.
Make your own
Actually, you can also make your own, either from sections of images (ie photos) or anything else. This is simple:
1/ Take a screen shot of the area you want as an icon by pressing Command & Shift and 4 (not the '4' on the numeric keypad, but the '4' above your main qwerty keyboard letters). This gives you a crosshair.
2/ Click and drag the crosshair over the area you want as an icon. This makes a screenshot of the area and puts that on your desktop.
3/ Open it in Preview, either by double-clicking it or by dragging the screenshot file to the Preview icon in the Dock and releasing the mouse button when the Preview icon goes dark.
4/ Choose Select-All from the Edit menu (or hit Command - a) or drag Previews marquee selection tool over the area you want. (Holding down Shift when you drag the marquee constrains the selection to a perfect square.)
5/ Choose copy from the Edit menu (or Command - c)
6/ In the Get Info window of the file or folder you want to change, click on the icon preview and choose Paste (Command - v).
