How To: Make Custom Drive and Folder Icons For Your Mac
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Mac users can pretty easily change their icons for hard drives and folders.
- Find an image that is at least 128px x 128px you’d like to use.
- Edit the image in Photoshop or any image editor able to set the background transparent. You can also add a drop shadow background if you want to get fancy.
- Save the file as a PSD or PNG image file.
- Install the Apple’s Developer Tools (available from Apple or your on your Mac OS X install disk.)
- Open Icon Composer (/Developer/Applications/Utilities) and drag the image file you made into each box. It will ask you for to confirm some things and be sure to select “Use Scaled Version” and “Extract Mask.” Save the file.
- Convert the ICNS file to RSRC using Icns2Rsrc.
- You’re now ready to switch the icon. Open the Get Info window for the icon, click on the miniature icon in the top left and press Command C. Then, use Get Info on the drive you want to change the icon on, click the mini icon and press Command V.
[How To: Create Custom Icons for your Mac via Lifehacker]
[tags]custom icon, drive icon, folder icon, apple, mac os x, apple mac, apple mac os x, os x, icns2rsrc, icns, rsrc, icon composer[/tags]
3 Comments
BobbyW
May 28th, 2007
at 6:03pm
What is the difference between all these file types? It looks like I could use the mini icon from the original image, or the icns, or the rsrs. What improvements are being added to each file along the way that make the extra steps worth taking?
TzeenieWheenie
July 5th, 2007
at 4:29pm
Nice! But it’s somehow just on the mac where you copied the icon. I tried and plugged my usb hdd in another mac and it still had the standard icon.
Anybody got an idea how to permanently add the icon to the drive? So it’s being used on each and every Mac regardless??
Cheers!
Vic Art
February 11th, 2009
at 10:22pm
I found this info very useful. Installed Xcode, Icns2Rsrc and it worked just fine.
Thanks for the post!
v.