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I've just created an AppleScript simple application and I'd like it to have a nice icon (besides the rolled paper it is by default). How can I change an icon for this application (or any other application in my dock)?

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3 Answers

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Open the Info window for the application (File » Get Info, or Command-I), click the icon in that window (a blue border will appear), and paste in a new icon.

iTunes Get Info with selected icon

Any image you can open in Preview can be used as an icon: open it in Preview, select it, and copy it. That will put an image on the clipboard that includes a format that can be pasted as an application icon.

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I dragged and droped an jpg image over the icon, but the icon now is the "preview application" icon with JPG text bellow... :-( – Daniel Cukier Sep 8 '09 at 15:31
You can't just use a JPG, you actually have to have a proper compatible OSX icon file – Rob Cowell Sep 8 '09 at 15:35
This solution seems like the most correct, but can anyone think of a reason why it might be failing? I've installed Chromium.app, and if I inspect it's package contents I see app.icns and document.icns files that have the new, non-shiny icons. However, the app continues to start up with the old, shiny one. I've tried using the Info window to cut-and-paste the icns file over the old icon, but the generic file icon appears instead. Delete will revert the icon back to the shiny one. Any ideas? – Eric Nguyen Apr 27 '11 at 16:54
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Ah, never mind. The icons can be cached, apparently. Restarting my machine brought up the new icons. – Eric Nguyen Apr 27 '11 at 17:09
Thanks, Gareth! – Andrew J. Brehm Sep 23 '11 at 13:24
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up vote 1 down vote

According to macosxhints.com, it seems that in 10.6 the icons for standard Mac OS X applications (or even Apple software in general) might no longer be easily changed, as the application folders are kind of read-only.

One could of course change those access rights, but changing the package contents might break the Code Signing's signature for that application. And if the signature becomes invalid, then applications might no longer be allowed to access the keychain, will no longer be permanently allowed an exception in the firewall if it's known to check its own integrity (known to have caused trouble for configd, mDNSResponder and racoon), or might cause trouble when using software update.

(Above, might indicates that I am not sure. Some quick tests changing the iTunes, Safari and Activity Monitor icons did not break the Code Signing, though for some other, yet unknown reason the firewall might repeatedly ask Do you want the application “iTunes.app” to accept incoming network connections? For more details see If Mac code signing is tampered with, what might fail?)

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up vote 0 down vote

I would at least try out a trial version of Panic's CandyBar 3 application. Tuned up for 10.6, I haven't had any problems with it and I changed quite a few icons, including system applications like Finder and System Preferences.

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Aha, so CandyBar is changing the icons again? Some time ago they disabled that option because they were afraid to break Apple's Code Signing (which CandyBar indeed does, but so far it's unknown if it causes any problems). – Arjan Oct 7 '09 at 4:43
I only found a couple of apps that I couldn't change, and surprisingly enough two are Transmit and Coda (two Panic apps). There were a couple more "core" apple ones that it doesn't change, but finder and sys pref's work fine. – Josh K Oct 7 '09 at 13:32
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