Anyone that has bought a new Mac sees the same screen. If you are like me, customizing the way your computer looks is something fun to do in the little free time available.

Customizing the icons on the dock is actually very simple, along with the finder, but Apple made their programs icons a little bit more difficult to change.

First thing to do is search around the internet, there are plenty of icon sites, including Apple’s website, but I would recommend www.interfacelift.com/icons-mac/. They have plenty to choose from and pretty much have anything that you may desire. The downloads are usually either in folder form when downloaded and sometimes in compressed files.

Once you have downloaded the files you like, you can match them up with the appropriate folder, file, application, or drive. For this example, we are going to use the home folder. Instead of seeing a boring house, why not spice it up a bit and fool around?

The first thing you want to do is pick out the icon of choice that you want to replace the old one with. Click the icon file once and then hit Command+C to copy it. Then you are going to click on the home folder (usually your name.) Click it once on the left toolbar in Finder and then hit Command+I. This will bring up your folder information.

See the little icon at the top left of the info screen? Click it once, and you will notice the background highlights around it. Then simply hit Command+V and there you go! The icon is now changed to your choice.

You can do the same for applications, but keep in mind they need to be closed first. Once you have changed the icon for them, you can open the program back up and you will notice the icon change automatically in the dock.

You are able to use the same method for drives, which always looks better than the plain icons you start with. Everything else works in the same fashion, but the Apple applications are a bit more tricky! We are going to use Apple Mail as an example.

For Apple software, the icons are going to need to be .icns files. Most downloaded icons are not this file format so you are going to have to use another program named icon2icns. It is a free program available at http://www.ittpoi.com/icon2icns/. Once the program is installed all you have to do is drag the icon you like to the program, and it will save it as a .icns file in the same folder as you dragged the original icon from.

Once you have the .icns file that you want for Mail, go ahead and open up your Finder window. Go to Applications, and look for Mail. Right click (Control+Click) and click on the option to “Show Package Contents”

Click on Contents-Resources and there should be a ton of files in the folder. Use a list view and click on “Kind” near the top of the right side of the window, this will help you find the .icns file that Mail currently uses.

See how it is labeled app.icns? When you bring the other icon over, it must be the same name!

Now I recommend that before you do this, you drag the original .icns file that is in the Resources folder out and put it somwhere as backup. You can leave the name, or rename it something like original-app.icns. Backing up the original file on an Apple program is always a good idea in case you have problems (which you shouldn’t if you do it correctly!) and you need to put the original .icns file back.

Go back to the new .icns file that you created with the icon of your choice. Go ahead and rename the file app.icns. Now just click and drag the newly renamed file over to the Resources folder. It will prompt you to ask if you want to replace the file; click replace and you are done!

Once again, reopen the program, and you now have a new icon for Mail. The same goes for Safari and any other Apple software.

Another program that can do all of this and a little more is called CandyBar, but it costs money, so if you want to make your Mac different and make it stand out, try these simple steps and have fun customizing! (Take a look at my customized desktop screenshot below…)