How to change the icon (apply a thumb) of a folder on Mac OS X?

Question

In Mac OS X, suppose you open your root disk, following folders/directories will have different icon (thumb) on it.

• Application
• Developer
• Library
• System

How to apply a thumb image on my specific folder/directories?

Solution 1

• locate the image file you want to use
• press Cmd-C (Edit:Copy)
• locate the folder you want the thumbnail applied to
• press Cmd-I (File:Get Info)
• click on the top left icon until it gets a colored outline
• press Cmd-V (Edit:Paste)

You can also copy existing icons, use the Get Info window as source.

Edit: If this doesn't work, open the image in Preview.app, select part of or the whole image and press Cmd-C (Edit:Copy). Then proceed with step 3.

Solution 2

I'd go with drag'n'drop:

• open info of file(s)/folder(s) to set icon on
• locate your icon (it can be an icon file or just any file, which icon you see for that file will be the one you will set)
• drag icon and drop it on top left icon in info window

Solution 3

Customizing file and folder icons in Mac OS X presents a more involved process utilizing an .icns file which can contain several versions of an icon for display at different sizes. While less elegant than the ⌘ + C, ⌘ + I, ⌘ + V method, it's useful in cases where scaling a single icon produces unacceptable results (such as when the 16x16 icon is an indistinct blur).

Solution 4

You need to create a special Folder-type icon (the usual app bundle .icns won't work here). Img2icns will give you an option to create this type of icon, despite its name.

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Comments

[pisfire]

Excellent one. ! never mentioned in documents.

[Chealion]

Mac OS X auto generates thumbnails for PDFs, images and other file types in the Finder in any view.