Using Custom Icons in OS X

Hard Way: Manually Changing Your Icons

Manually changing your icons is as simple as copying and pasting icons from one Get Info window to another.

1. Press Command+I while selecting an application/folder you’d like to duplicate an icon for

2. In the top left corner, click the icon so the edges become blue

3. Press Command+C to copy the icon

4. Now press Command+I while selecting an application/folder you’d like to change

5. Press Command+V to paste the new icon

6. You should see the icon appear quickly in both the icon and preview spots

This method has a couple problems. First I found issues copying a plain icon file, so using a new icon can be tricky.

If you want to customize a single folder or application, this is a great method.

However, if you wanted to modify all of your icons system-wide, this would be extremely slow.

Next time I’ll show you the easy way.