Skip to content

Guide

How to change a folder icon on Mac

To change a folder icon on a Mac, Control-click the folder in Finder and choose Customize Folder to give it a color, a symbol or an emoji. To use your own picture instead, copy it in Preview, select the folder, choose File > Get Info, click the small icon at the top of the window and paste.

By at Neon FrenchieUpdated Checked on macOS 27.0.1 on

Give a folder a color, symbol or emoji

This is new in macOS Tahoe 26, and it’s the quickest way. It works on any folder you made, and for folders in iCloud Drive the look shows on your other Macs too.

  1. In Finder, Control-click the folder and choose Customize Folder…. You can also select the folder and click the Action button in the Finder toolbar.
  2. Click a colored circle to change the folder’s color.
  3. Pick a symbol from the list to put it on the folder, or click Emoji and choose one.

To color every folder on your Mac at once, open System Settings, then Appearance and choose a Folder color. That setting appears when Icon & widget style is Default, Dark or Clear. With Tinted, it’s called Icon, widget, & folder color and colors app icons and widgets as well.

Use your own picture as the icon

This works on every recent version of macOS, and on files as well as folders.

  1. Open the image in Preview and choose Edit, then Copy. This copies the picture itself, not the file.
  2. In Finder, select the folder and choose File, then Get Info.
  3. Click the small icon at the top of the Info window, just below the title bar.
  4. Choose Edit, then Paste.

If Paste is dimmed, you clicked the large preview lower in the window rather than the small icon at the top. The picture replaces the whole icon and isn’t fitted into a folder shape, so if you want it to still look like a folder, use an image that includes one. A square PNG with a transparent background looks best, because the space around it stays clear on any wallpaper.

Put the original icon back

  1. Select the folder and choose File, then Get Info.
  2. Select the small icon at the top of the Info window.
  3. Choose Edit, then Cut.

That removes a pasted picture. For a color, symbol or emoji, open Customize Folder… again and change or clear what you picked.

When a picture and a symbol clash

A folder shows either a pasted picture or a symbol or emoji, not both. If you choose a symbol or emoji for a folder that already has a pasted picture, Finder warns that the current icon needs to be removed first and that you can’t undo it. Remove and Customize deletes the picture; Keep Current Icon leaves it alone. Keep the original image somewhere if you might want it back.

Changing an app icon instead

To change an app’s icon, the same Get Info method works on many apps you installed yourself: copy a picture, select the app in the Applications folder, open Get Info and paste onto the small icon. Apple documents it for files and folders; an app is a folder underneath, but not every app accepts a new icon. Use Edit, then Cut to undo it. Apps that come with macOS, such as Safari and Calculator, sit on a part of the disk that can’t be changed, so their icons stay as they are.

To change the look of every app icon at once, use Icon & widget style in System Settings, then Appearance: Default, Dark, Clear or Tinted. These styles came to the Mac with macOS Tahoe 26. Our guide to a calm Mac desktop pairs these with the wallpaper.

Folders that match your wallpaper, with MacScapes

MacScapes, our live wallpaper app, can give folders pattern icons drawn in the palette of the wallpaper on your desktop. Its Folder Icons pane has 70 patterns in 15 families, from stripes and gingham to night skies. Eight of them are free, and so are the 50 symbols you can put on top. Pro adds the rest, icons cut from the scenes, and your own images.

  1. In MacScapes, open Folder Icons, pick a pattern, and choose a palette or keep the one from your current vibe.
  2. Click Apply to Folders…, choose the folders, and click Apply Icon. You can also drop folders onto the pane.
  3. Or choose Apply Inside a Folder… to give every folder inside one the icon, including folders you add later (while MacScapes is running, or the next time it opens).

MacScapes writes icons the same way a pasted picture is saved, so they stay on the Mac where you set them and don’t sync through iCloud Drive. It clears the old icon and waits before setting a new one, which keeps Finder from showing a stale icon. It lists every folder it changed, with Reset to Standard Icon for each. The icons stay if you remove the app, so reset any you don’t want first. More on the folder icons page.