There’s something to be said for customizing the look and feel of the products you use. After all, customizations like this make your device “your own” and add a personal touch to it. While it’s easy to customize your Mac’s features like the desktop and even some of the gestures macOS offers, did you know that you can even customize the app icons used by your apps? That too, without using any third-party software. All you need is a PNG image of the icon you want to use. Well, Here’s how you can use custom icons on macOS:
Change App Icons on macOS
Designing an icon for an application is not as easy as it seems. A lot of thought goes into designing the perfect icon, as most people will recognize the app that way. Think about how many times actually you read name of the app on your Mac before launching? Heck, the dock doesn’t even have the names of the apps you keep there. Apparently, icons are pretty important. If you want to customize the icons on your Mac, just follow these steps:
1. Getting the Icon You Want
Perhaps the hardest part in this tutorial is deciding which icon to use instead of the default icon. If you’re good at design, you can probably design an icon yourself. However, I’m not. So, I will look for app icons that I can use. There are many websites that offer icons that you can download with various licenses. i will use icon finder. As an example, I will change the app icon for Google Chrome.
- First, launch a web browser and Go to Iconfinder. Here, look for the icon you want. I’m a fan of the new Google logo, so I’ll call it: “Google”.
note: Don’t forget to filter the results by licenses to make sure you don’t violate copyright.
- When you find an icon you like, click on it and download in PNG format. I will download the Google logo in 512×512 size.
2. Changing Default Icon
After downloading the icon you want to use, simply follow the steps below to change the icon in the application you want.
- First, open the new icon you just downloaded. Print command + Ato select and then command + C to copy.
- Then, in Finder, navigate to: Applications folderand choose app You want to change the icon. Right click and “Obtain information“. You can also press command + me to open the inspector.
- Click on the app’s icon In the inspector. You will be able to see that it has been selected.
- Simply press command + V To paste the icon you copied in place of the icon used by the application. If you are using a standard account, you may be prompted to enter an administrator login credentials. When you’re done, the app’s icon will change to the new icon you pasted.
note: While this method changes the app’s icon, if you’ve already added the app to your Dock, you’ll need to add the app back to the Dock to see the new icon there. But don’t worry, the app’s icon has been changed system-wide, and you can check this by going to Spotlight and typing the app’s name. It will show you the new icon. You can also check this on Launchpad.
SEE ALSO: 12 USB Type-C Accessories for the New MacBook Pro
Use Custom Icons on your Mac
Now that you know how to use custom icons on Mac, you can change the icons of any app you want to always have a different icon secretly. So go ahead and customize macOS icons to your liking and share your thoughts with us. Also, if you have any questions or run into any issues, let us know in the comments section below.
