How To Create Custom Folder And Drive Icons For Your Mac

You can create custom folder icons by using only the software that comes with your Mac. By taking the existing folder icon graphic and bringing it into Preview, you can tint the color and then add text, emoji or shapes to create a useful custom folder icon. Changing folder icons can be a little tricky and buggy, however. You can also use graphics apps to create more highly-customized icons and download icons online to use.



There are three add-on tutorials that I made that go along with this video. They are all at YouTube:
How To Create Custom Folder Icons With Acorn
How To Create Custom Folder Icons With Pixelmator Pro
How To Find and Use Custom Folder Icons Online

Comments: 15 Responses to “How To Create Custom Folder And Drive Icons For Your Mac”

    Edward Glinski
    5 years ago

    This is great. I believe you did this video a couple of years ago. Perhaps using images from the web or photos will be forthcoming as opposed to pages images and images.

    5 years ago

    Edward: Look at the three other videos I released today (listed above). The last one deals with that.

    Ian MacGregor
    5 years ago

    Gary: I've been able to reproduce this tutorial in GIMP, thank you so much for your work! Changing a folder icon in the iCloud Drive folder of my MacBook Air doesn't seem to allow the icon to propagate across iCloud - the new custom icon doesn't show up in the Files app on my iPad or iPhone. Is this normal.. or am I doing something wrong? Is this folder icon change only a Mac thing?

    5 years ago

    Ian: Looks like iCloud doesn't support this. Neither does iOS since there is no way to do this on iOS.

    Mace
    5 years ago

    Great tip. I've collected a lot of clip art. They're stored in folders by theme -- holidays, cities, tools, etc. Now I can grab a representative image from within each folder and change the folder icon in indicate what the theme is. It makes searching for graphics much easier.

    edward
    5 years ago

    I was able to attach an image on to a folder following your directions. When I email a folder with an image superimposed, the sent feature in mail does not show the image. I also do not if the receiver received the folder with the image superimposed.

    5 years ago

    edward: No, sending a folder won't carry that image with it. That is a customization for you on your Mac alone.

    Lindy
    5 years ago

    Regarding sending folders with a personalized icon...would it help to compress the file first? And was it sent to another Mac owner? !!
    Thanks for another great video Gary.

    5 years ago

    Lindy: I don't think so. But test it out and see.

    John Westby
    5 years ago

    Thanks for the video, but I can’t get icons to paste onto the drive symbol. I have icons from g-technology on the clipboard but they won’t paste in (OS 10.15.2) Thanks

    5 years ago

    John: Is this an external drive? Is it not formatted for macOS?

    John Westby
    5 years ago

    Thanks Gary. Yes it’s an external drive which is supplied formatted for Mac and the drive is working fine. Thanks John

    5 years ago

    John: Not sure what the issue could be then. Must be something different about it if it won't let you customize the icon. Maybe try a restart and see if it works then?

    John Westby
    5 years ago

    Thanks Gary. I will try that. John

    Andrew Hatheway
    5 years ago

    Didn't work for me. When I created text box it only allowed me to resize the box left or right, not diagonally so the icon I click was very very small. (Catalina)

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