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How To Change Your OS X App Icons
Mar 11, 2025
A tutorial on how to change your applications in Mac OS X.
View Video Transcript
0:05
hey everyone today I'm going to show you
0:07
how you can change your Mac OS 10
0:09
application icons now recently I've
0:11
gotten a lot of questions about the
0:13
icons in my doc as well as a lot of the
0:15
icons in my application folder um that
0:19
have iOS icons instead of regular Mac OS
0:23
10 icons and I've gotten a lot of
0:25
questions about you know how do you
0:26
change these and things like that so I
0:28
figured it must be a a fairly popular
0:31
topic so why not do a video about it so
0:34
I'm going to show you two different ways
0:36
that you can do this one is the easy way
0:38
and one is the hard way now you might be
0:41
thinking you know why would you show the
0:43
hard way if there's easier way the
0:45
reason is the easier way requires a
0:48
piece of software which is going to cost
0:50
you money so if you'd rather do it that
0:52
way it's it's easier um but it's going
0:55
to cost you money so I'm going to show
0:56
you the a little bit harder way still
0:59
not too hard uh but it's free so what
1:02
you're going to need to have is icons so
1:05
what you're going to have to do is get
1:06
some icons and then you're also going to
1:08
have to have an application so I'm going
1:09
to go into my applications folder and
1:11
select an icon that or select an app
1:14
that I want to change the icon of so for
1:16
this example let's just choose stickies
1:19
I can always change this back what I'm
1:21
going to do is I'm going to right click
1:22
on it and click show package contents
1:26
and I'm going to see another folder open
1:27
up here and in here I can open up
1:30
contents and then you have to go into
1:32
the resources folder and you're going to
1:35
see an icon in here and here it's called
1:38
stickies doic NS so here's your stickies
1:41
icon and that's what it is so now you're
1:44
going to look for the icon you want to
1:46
replace it let's just use the iBooks
1:49
icon here uh I have it set to for
1:52
dictionary but you get the idea uh it's
1:55
going to have to be the same exact name
1:57
as the icon in the resources folder
2:00
so I can type stickies here and get it
2:03
to be the same name and now that it's
2:05
the same name I can drag it over into
2:08
here and it's going to ask me to
2:10
authenticate it with my password because
2:13
it's going to replace the icon file
2:14
that's in that folder with the new one
2:17
now just a word of warning your icon
2:20
file that was in there is going to get
2:22
replaced with the new one so you might
2:24
want to save a copy of this icon this
2:27
stickies icon in a separate place before
2:30
you do this in case you ever want to
2:31
change it back that's just kind of my
2:34
opinion once again this is the difficult
2:36
way to do it so there is an easier way
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so I'm going to click authenticate and
2:41
then an older item it'll give you a
2:43
little warning and I'm going to click
2:44
replace and it's going to ask me for my
2:46
password just type that in hit enter and
2:49
now it's replaced so you're not going to
2:51
see the changes right away um if I put
2:54
in my doc for example you will see the
2:56
changes you can see that it has the
2:57
iBooks icon now but what you'll have to
2:59
do is log out log back in and you'll see
3:02
the updated
3:04
icon now if you'd like to make your own
3:06
icons too custom whatever you want
3:09
instead of what I've provided here you
3:11
can download an application called image
3:14
to icons and you can see it right here
3:16
the URL for that is right here it's IMG
3:22
tocns
3:24
app.com and you can download it from
3:26
here it's a free version so gives you
3:29
pretty much all the features you'll need
3:31
so you can open this up and from
3:33
here you can drop any image there and
3:37
it'll turn it into an icon file for you
3:39
just like that pretty simple and you can
3:42
make your own custom icons that way now
3:45
here comes the easy way that first way I
3:46
showed you was a little bit complicated
3:48
a little bit complex the easier way is
3:51
to use an application called candy bar
3:53
you can get that at panic.com
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candybar and What it lets you do is
3:59
pretty much do exactly what I showed you
4:01
before but in a drag and drop fashion
4:03
it's really easy the only problem with
4:05
this is that it costs money so you know
4:09
you have a trial period but it still is
4:12
going to cost you money and if you're
4:15
just looking to change one or two icons
4:17
I'd recommend the original way I showed
4:18
you so I'm going to open up Candy Bar
4:21
here I have the free demo version
4:23
because once again I'd rather just do it
4:26
the free
4:27
way so it's going to find all my my
4:29
applications and I have all my icons
4:32
here all I did is I dragged OT of this
4:34
folder into my icons here and it they
4:39
all show up in this little Bay here now
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I have all the applications on my Mac
4:44
listed in this folder it automatically
4:46
finds them all for you and what you can
4:48
do here is say you want to change an
4:50
icon like let's say QuickTime shouldn't
4:52
be that QuickTime icon anymore maybe I
4:54
want the remote icon I can just drag it
4:56
onto that just like that and then up at
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the top here you'll see a button called
5:00
apply icons all I have to do is hit
5:03
apply type in my password and it'll
5:07
relaunch the dock and my new icons will
5:09
be there once again you might have to
5:10
log in and log out but that's all there
5:12
is to it and your icons will be changed
5:14
just like that now candy bar also has
5:16
another handy feature where I can click
5:18
over on this icon of this CD drive and I
5:21
can change my volume icon so my
5:24
Macintosh HD hard drive icon I could
5:26
change things like that but you know
5:29
when once again if you can justify the
5:32
price to pay to do this then it's good
5:34
for you but personally I'd rather just
5:37
do it the more difficult way so that's
5:39
all there is to changing your icons and
5:42
if you use the simpler process it is
5:45
actually extremely easy to do uh but
5:48
it's still fairly easy to do if you use
5:50
the more advanced process either way
5:52
it's a cool little thing you can do to
5:54
really customize your Mac and give it a
5:56
a nice unique feel I like the iOS icon
6:00
so that's what I've done with mine but
6:02
you know you can do whatever you want so
6:04
I hope you found this video useful and
6:05
thank you for watching
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