I'm always so pleased when I find a way round some exasperating computer problem that I thought I'd share my moments of triumph ...

Saturday 16 November 2013

Replace standard icons with custom ones

I like to waste time ornamenting my desktop and other icons - don't you?

First just to note that CandyBar is available free of charge for now, it seems they've given up the struggle to keep up with evolving Mac Os's. CandyBar is a convenient way to replace Mac icons.

As I'm sure you know, to replace an individual icon you do the following:
  • Click to highlight a folder or a file or an app.
  • Get Info about it - cmd-i, or right click and select
  • Highlight and Copy (cmd-c) the icon you want to use
  • Highlight the folder icon, top left in the Info panel, and Paste (cmd-v) your new one.
That's it! If you want to revert to the original standard Mac one, just call up Info again, and click and delete (cmd-x) the icon you pasted in.

Show the new icon in the Dock

Now, let's drag the pretty new icon into the dock ... Oh! there's just the boring old plain one in the Dock! To have the new one show, here's a workaround.

See in the screenshot above two icons for Downloads (click the image to enlarge it)? The second one is an alias.
  • Click to highlight the original
  • Right click and do Make Alias
  • To tidy up the folder name, you can just delete the word Alias and leave a space at the end of the folder name.
  • Then, you can drag your alias into the dock and there's the nice new icon.
An additional advantage is that when you click that dock icon you get just your preferred view of that folder, List for example.

2 comments:

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