If you work regularly on your Mac, you may have already tired of the appearance of its icons and you want to change them. Apple usually makes few changes to its interface, so knowing how to change them on your own can be more than interesting. In this article we will tell you how you can customize these icons and even choose the ones that you have created yourself.
What icons can be changed?
Unfortunately not all application icons can be changed, as it is only allowed with third party icons. In fact, some of these have an option already integrated in their settings to be able to change it for some other proposal from the developers, although not in most of them. In any case, native applications do not allow changing the icon or at least not with the methods that we are going to explain, although it is possible to change the one of the folders.
Where to change icons in macOS
There is no section within the Mac settings that allows you to change the icons of several applications and folders at the same time. For this reason you will have to go one by one changing it, but it is extremely easy if you follow these steps:
- Copy a photo that you have saved on your Mac, either your own or downloaded from the internet. We recommend that you open it with a preview, and go to Edit in the toolbar and click on “Copy”.
- Go to the place where the folder or application that you want to customize is located and secondary click on its icon and click on “Get information”. If it is an application you should go to the Applications folder, since it will not work from the dock.
- Select the application or folder icon that appears at the top of the pop-up window and press cmd + v to paste it.
- Now enter the Mac administrator password to allow the changes to be made.
Why are the changes not showing in the Dock?
If you have correctly changed the icon and you do not appreciate the changes in the dock or any other part, our advice to solve it is to remove it from this part, restart the Mac and put that icon back where you had it before. That way you will check that the changes made have already been applied.
Two recommendations for the images to use
Although you can use all kinds of images for the icons, whether or not they are square, it is recommended that they have that aspect so that they are strange and disagree with the aesthetics of the Mac. It is also recommended that these be in .PNG format and have a transparent background , in such a way that if it has a white background it is not visible in the icon and it is ugly.
What other icons can be put?
If there is already an icon in an existing app or folder that you want to reuse in another app, you can do that too. To do this you must click on “Obtain information” of the original icon that you want to have, copy said icon with cmd + c and follow the same steps as explained above to paste it into the other application that you want to take its form.
Return to original icon
If you want to restore the original item that was previously in the application, you will have to click on “Get information” in the application or folder you want to restore, select the icon at the top of the window and press cmd + x to cut it. It will not be necessary after you paste it anywhere, since that will already help you to have eliminated the new icon that you had put.
