How can I change Finder's sidebar icons in macOS?

Question

Without using a 3rd-party application, how do I go about changing the icon in the sidebar for the Developer folder?

When I click on "Get Info" for this icon it's showing the icon does have the hammer icon but it's not showing in El Capitan in the sidebar when I add it over there?

Does anyone have a solution or can refer me to an article that will provide me with some direct information on how to add/edit this?

I believe they're all generic icons, unfortunately - have a look at /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources, all the sidebar icons are there — perhapsmaybeharry, Jun 12 '16 at 08:17
Related: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/76897/change-mac-os-x-finder-sidebar-icons https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/187767/change-mac-os-x-sidebar-icons — grg, Jun 12 '16 at 09:02
@perhapsmaybeharry I can see the Developer icon is in the folder there and it's still not showing up in my Sidebar :-( — Danijel-James W, Jun 12 '16 at 12:41
@Danijel-JamesW the icon you see is the generic "Finder" folder icon, named DeveloperFolderIcon.icns. However, sidebar icons are named Sidebar*.icns and are monochromatic. I'm not sure if it's possible to add/edit a sidebar icon without affecting all other sidebar icons. — perhapsmaybeharry, Jun 12 '16 at 12:50
The Dropbox folder has a custom icon in the sidebar? What gives??! https://www.dropbox.com/s/xt8u2orepav0p78/Screenshot%202018-02-09%2019.58.35.png?dl=0 — Joshua Pinter, Feb 10 '18 at 02:58
Some more details about how it's up to the application developers for custom icons can be found at: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/83152/how-come-dropbox-gets-an-icon-in-finder-sidebar — Eric Majerus, Mar 20 '19 at 23:33
My google drive folder also has a custom icon, so it has to be possible for third-party developers to customize it. — Peter Schorn, Aug 02 '20 at 03:52

MrTemple · Answer 1 · 2020-06-04T23:05:17.057

I'd love to be able to change the icons without an add-on. You get better visibility and much faster access.

Best thing I've managed to do for easy visibility is to add emoji to the names of the folders.

But of course you likely don't want to add emoji to the folders themselves. Instead you can put an alias to the folder in the sidebar, and have that alias contain the emoji.

I created ~/Library/Sidebar Aliases/ folder and dropped a number of aliases in there (Command-Option drag the folder). Then I renamed those to include whatever emoji icons I want to help visibility, and added those aliases to the sidebar.

Works perfectly:

Bonus: You can make the names themselves more descriptive. I've got a number of network folders in my sidebar and they all have the same name "Photos" for example.

Using an alias, I can have my smb://<server>.local/Collating/Photos/ folder appear in the sidebar as Collating Photos, without touching the actual folder name itself.

Important Note: The only noticeable downside to this approach is that you can no longer drag and drop files into the sidebar aliases, as you can when there's an actual folder in the sidebar. Not a big issue for me, but worth noting.

Just like you, I have a "Screenshots" (located inside Pictures folder) folder pinned on my Finder's sidebar for easy, 1 click access. And supposedly, I would love to customize it's folder icon to show the symbol on the "Screenshot" app icon — PrinceKickster, May 11 '21 at 10:00
@StevenMancera Yeah, you used to be able to customize these icons, but years ago the ability got squashed along with what seems to be a steady decline of visual contrast in MacOS. Which is bizarre to me. So many of these flattening changes are objectively a lot less functional and subjectively I think they're aesthetically worse. ‍♂️ — MrTemple, May 11 '21 at 17:04

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 29 '21 at 14:49

11

Just create a Developer folder in your user folder and the developer icon will automatically be on the folder, and when we add the folder to sidebar, it will also automatically be an icon.

answered Dec 29 '21 at 14:49

Hrvoje

219

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Community Dec 29 '21 at 14:55
1

The creation of ~/Developer folder is indeed enough to make the icon appear automagically. – Eir Nym Aug 17 '23 at 10:17
Is there a list of other reserved names that get special icons like this? – Merchako Nov 10 '23 at 18:10
1

@Merchako maybe this can help you https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/272955/347265 – Hrvoje Nov 11 '23 at 23:17

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 05 '17 at 21:40

9

I found a SIMBL plugin that changes the icons on the sidebar to custom ones. By removing the icons from the configuration file, it doesn't replace any icons with custom ones, but only allows the icon of the folder itself to be displayed on the sidebar. Keep in mind that this will also change your home folder, All My Files folder and all other folders to display in colour.

Download modified version here

Remember to use mySIMBL for the plugin to fully work: mySIMBL download

Disclaimer: The original plugin is made by W0lfschild and is open source. I do not own this file, I have only provided a version with pre-edited config files. Original version is on GitHub.

edited Nov 05 '17 at 21:40

intcreator

695

answered May 16 '17 at 02:21

1

@hmedia1 If you have another idea for a better solution to this problem, please let me know or edit my post, and I'll be happy to make that change. – May 07 '18 at 04:34
What do you mean by "Keep in mind that this will also change your home folder", will that rename or change my root user Home folder. Can you clarify that? As far as I know on Mac, changing or renaming your Home folder is dangerous, and could break your user profile? – PrinceKickster May 11 '21 at 10:08
@StevenMancera The only thing that changes about the home folder is its icon in the Finder sidebar. At this point in time this solution is quite outdated, however, as it requires the SIMBL addon to inject code into the system, for which to happen SIP needs to be disabled. Adding emoji to the folder names would be much more practical, IMO. – Sep 17 '21 at 01:46
Modified version file host is defunct and the download is not present in archive.org – jkmartindale Nov 12 '21 at 17:43
SIMBL is now discontinued and is now succeeded by https://github.com/MacEnhance/MacForge.
Your link to the modified version seem to have expired/deleted.

Fr0zenFyr

Sep 09 '22 at 11:03

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 21 '20 at 22:46

There is at least one officially supported, modern way to change the sidebar icon for a folder.

If you enable a Finder Sync Extension and set it's directoryURLs to contain that folder, the app's custom sidebar icon should be used instead of the default icon.

This is the method Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. use to change the Finder sidebar icons for their syncing folder.

This does not work for changing the icons of certain folders, such as the root of your System directory or your home folder. But these locations often already have their own custom sidebar icons already.

Finder Sync Extensions

You can also use the extension point’s API to add a sidebar icon for the monitored folder.

You will only be able to have one custom icon per Finder Extension app, so if you were to use this method to customize several folders you would need to use multiple Finder Sync Extensions. A single app won't be able to arbitrarily customize multiple folders.

So this will mean, you have to develop your own little Finder Extension Applet, make it run on the background, so that your Folder will have an icon on Finder's Sidebar, to trick Finder that this folder is a Cloud Storage.
I don't know if this is worth the effort or not?? I am no developer, I am just a designer. — PrinceKickster, May 11 '21 at 09:56

score 5 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 06 '23 at 21:46

5

Only items you can activate from Finder > Preferences > Sidebar have custom sidebar icons. If you manually add folders, such as the Developer folder, to your sidebar favorites, they will show up with a generic sidebar icon, even if the folder has a custom Finder icon.

The only way to change this would be with hacks as described by e.g. Keyboard_Gamer's answer.

For more clarity, a 3rd-party app can add a finder extension to get a custom icon. This is why dropbox, google drive, onedrive and other folders might have custom icons.

edited Feb 06 '23 at 21:46

anonymousaga

1,391

answered May 21 '17 at 14:52

stacker

85

8

Dropbox is not listed there and has a custom icon – ohcibi Oct 27 '18 at 14:40
2

@ohcibi that is probably because Dropbox is installing a Finder extension which makes this possible. – Kevin Dreßler Nov 13 '18 at 21:40
1

Unfortunately this is simply false. My Google Drive folder also has a custom icon. – Peter Schorn Aug 07 '20 at 20:45
1

Google Drive may also use a Finder extension. – Sam Weaver Apr 30 '21 at 15:13
Dropbox and Google drive DO use finder extensions. – anonymousaga Feb 06 '23 at 15:12

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 01 '19 at 01:32

5

In XtraFinder Preferences, check "Show colorful icons in the sidebar". A side effect is that this will make every icon colorful, maybe you like it.

answered Mar 01 '19 at 01:32

Di Liu

139

6

I don't think we should just down-vote him because it's not an appropriate answer. It's easier to provide more supporting comments to his answer. Also, it damages your reputation on here too guys. Please play nice to new members. :) – Danijel-James W Mar 07 '19 at 04:35
Sorry, I didn’t see the requirement of not using third-party app. That’s my fault. – Di Liu Mar 08 '19 at 05:41
3

There is no “down-voting him”, just down-voting this answer, so that it doesn’t appear higher than appropriate answers. Nothing personal going on here. – Philippe-André Lorin Oct 20 '19 at 14:43

How can I change Finder's sidebar icons in macOS?

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