How to change icons in Mac OS X

Saturday November 22, 2008

Want to change your Dock icons in Mac OS X? It’s pretty simple, if not obvious. Here’s how:

  1. Find the icon you want to use and copy it (Cmd+C).
  2. Find the application for which you want to use this new icon in Finder’s “Application” folder.
  3. Right-click the application and choose “Get Info”.
  4. Select the existing application icon in the top left corner of the “Get Info” pop-up window by single-clicking it.
  5. Paste your new icon (Cmd+V) over it.

If the application you chose is in your Dock, you might have to restart the Dock to get your new icon to appear. To do that, open Terminal and type: “killall -KILL Dock” (without the quotes). Your Dock should immediately restart. Click the application and your new icon will appear.


To revert to the application’s default icon, select the icon in the top left corner of the “Get Info” window and delete it by pressing the Delete key.

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Penny Tuesday February 3, 2009 at 7:51 pm

Thanks for the info, however, I was not able to change my System Preferences icon. Even after unlocking it would not accept the change…any suggestions?
Ciao!

2 Ivan Wednesday June 3, 2009 at 10:08 pm

Great tip about Dock, thanks. And if you need pictures for your article, feel free to grab ours: http://www.visualpharm.com/articles/change_mac_icons.html

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