Changing Finder Icon

[Ralphh123]

Hi all,

I just got a new Macbook, and have been loving being able to change the icons because of the beautiful hi res. However, I want to change the finder icon and have discovered that I cannot. I went into ~System/Library/CoreServices/Finder/Contents/Resources (opening the needed permissions) and changed the name of "Finder.ico" to "Saved Finder.ico" (just so I can have it if needed later). Then, I pasted the new icon into the Resources folder, the one that I wanted to replace the finder icon. I named it "finder.ico" and restarted my computer.

So, when I went back to ~System/Library/CoreServices and looked at the finder icon, it had changed - so far so good. But when I looked down at the dock, the icon was the same!

My overall question is: how can I change the finder icon in the dock, even when I've already changed the actual finder application icon?

Thanks for your time,
Ralph

 

[invasian]

You are changing the wrong icon...for the dock icon, you need to replace the finder.png file found in the Dock contents folder.

"/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/finder.png"

 

[Jason S.]

The best way to go about changing system icons would be to use CandyBar.

 

[Ralphh123]

Thank you both! I'm actually too cheap to buy candybar so I'll be using the dock.app folder. Thanks again, man, I'm really glad that I'll be able to do this. Does the icon I replace the original finder icon have to be a .png file?

 

[JudasX]

if your too cheap to pay for CandyBar, how about LiteIcon? It's virtually the same and it is freeware

 

[Ralphh123]

I've tried LiteIcon, but whenever I tried to replace the finder icon (the only one I couldn't do manually) it made the dock icon horrible quality. I'd just like to do this manually, anyway. It's a challenge.

Speaking of challenges:
I renamed "finder.png" to "Saved Finder.png" in ~System/Library/CoreServices/Dock/Contents/Resources. I replaced it with an icon that I named "finder.png". The icon used to be a .ico file, but that shouldn't matter. I restarted the Mac, but the finder icon in the dock remains the same, still.

Might there be a cache or something that I have to delete?

One thing to note: the "finder.ico" icon in ~System/Library/CoreServices/Finder/Contents/Resources is still the default image. You mentioned that that was the wrong icon to change if I wanted a change in the dock...but I was still wondering.

 

[invasian]

it can't be an .icns file...it has to be a .png . you can open up the .icns file with preview and save it as a.png

always make backups.

 

[Ralphh123]

it can't be an .icns file...it has to be a .png . you can open up the .icns file with preview and save it as a.png

always make backups.

I did that: I changed the icon, which was originally a .ico file, into a .png file. But for some reason, it doesn't affect my dock. It'd be great if someone with a lot of knowledge would help me out on this problem. No, I don't want to use Candybar, this is possible to do manually and I want to learn how!

 

[invasian]

there is a cache file that you also need to delete. it is called com.apple.dock.iconcache ...you can search for it as per this link which describes how to do all of this

http://justinlyman.com/node/5

 

[Ralphh123]

there is a cache file that you also need to delete. it is called com.apple.dock.iconcache ...you can search for it as per this link which describes how to do all of this

http://justinlyman.com/node/5

Ah, thank you very much. I followed these instructions, and, actually, something rather scary happened. After typing killall Dock in Terminal, and resetting the dock, the finder icon was just... not there. It was gone, there was no icon at all. So, I must be doing something wrong.

Is dragging the icon cache into the trash enough, or must I actually empty the trash?

Thank you for the help, all.

 

[invasian]

i would empty it and make sure that everything else is in order (like finder.png shouldn't be Finder.png etc.) the instructions on the link work as that is what i used