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tmaclean

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Right now, in my Stacks area I have my Firefox Downloads, Music, Movies, Pictures, and Documents. Most of them have a folder as the first item, so unless I mouse over them, I don't know which one is which. I had those folders have different icons in Tiger, but I'm not sure how to go about changing them now. Any ideas? Thanks.
 
Stacks

There is a sort of a way in stacks that you have sorted alphabetically. In stacks that are sorted alphabetically it will show the top most icon, for instance in default applications stack it shows your top most icon. So in theory find an icon you like, name it AA ( so it starts at the top alphabetically)
and that will be the top.

I am tying to find a better way to do it.

Interfacelift is a great places to search for icons.

http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/index.php?sort=date
 
there is a very easy way

just find the image that you want and copy it to your clipboard, or if you want the icon of the app click on the app and get info (command-I) click on the app icon in the upper left corner of the screen and copy it to your clipboard. then click on the folder of the stack and get info (command-I) Then click on the icon of the folder in the upper left and go to edit paste and your icon on the clipboard will be there
 
then click on the folder of the stack and get info (command-I) Then click on the icon of the folder in the upper left and go to edit paste and your icon on the clipboard will be there

This doesn't work in Stacks, that's why so many people are complaining. Each stack appears as a stack of the icons it contains. Your method won't work unless the stack/folder is empty.
 
I don't like how stack displays icons like , I hope someone finds a way to put a single icon and not like a pile of icons .
 
You can make stacks look better

I don't like how stack displays icons like , I hope someone finds a way to put a single icon and not like a pile of icons .

All I did was create a couple of cool jpg pictures using Photoshop and named them with a space " " before the first letter and then put it into the stack folder. I had to "force" it to refresh by telling it to sort by date added and then change it back to sort by name. But, it put my picture as the first icon and it doesn't look bad at all.
 
It worked for me.

This doesn't work in Stacks, that's why so many people are complaining. Each stack appears as a stack of the icons it contains. Your method won't work unless the stack/folder is empty.

The suggested approach does work; I just did it in OS X 10.6. But you need one extra step, which is to right click on the stack and select to display it as a folder instead of a stack. It will still work the same way.
 
How to do it in Snow Leopard

In 10.6 they added a feature that allows you to change the folder icon in stacks like I think you are asking. Treat it like a normal folder and change the icon, as described above. Then right click on the folder on the dock and select "Display as Folder". That should do it. Here's mine:

 
Old thread.

But, in Leopard, right click and select Display as Folder instead of Stack.
I have only three Stacks, displayed as above, and each has it's own symbol on the folder.
 
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