by You can change the icon of just about any file, folder, volume, or application in Mac OS X. This is an easy way to customize the appearance of items in the file system, and it can be a fun way to add a customized look to the desktop and home folder on a Mac. It only takes a moment per icon, and they can either be changed to icons belonging to another file or app, or changed to any image, and we’ll show how to do both.
Longtime Mac users know this process has been the same since the earliest days of Mac OS (System 7 was when icons first became changeable this way without the need for resource editing), but many newer OS X users are unfamiliar with the process, and thus it’s worth covering.
Change an Icon to an Image in Mac OS X
Customizing icons with any image is very easy. In this example we’ll switch the default Automator application icon for this app that quits everything to a customized icon created through Preview:
Open the image to use as an icon in Preview, then hit Command+A to “Select All”, then hit Command+C to Copy the image to the clipboard
Now select the file/folder in the Finder that you want to change icons for, then hit Command+i to bring up the “Get Info” window (Get Info can also be accessed from the File menu and right-click in Finder)
Click on the icon in the upper left corner, then hit Command+V to paste the image and set the new icon
Close out of Get Info
The end result is a custom icon appearing in the Finder:
For best results, always use a transparent PNG file for icons, and aim for the origin image to be 512
