Mac OS X Icon Utilities
Below is a collection of some of the finest icon-related software for Mac OS X. If your favorite program is missing from this list, drop us a note and we'll consider including it.
iThemeOS 2.0Planeshift Software $10.95 shareware |
iThemeOS 2 is a full featured application designed to let you change either your "work" or "play" environment to be more like you. Modify dock icons including Trash, Finder, and Dashboard. Modify the boot panel and login screen background image. Change all of the storage volume icons (hard drives and all optical disk types). Change a full suite of system folder icons, network icons, and more! iThemeOS 2 allows you to make your own icons using our built-in image converter or choose almost any file as an icon source and iThemeOS 2 will convert it to a .icns file and store it in the new iThemeOS Repository. Save and re-load your icon packs so you can share them with friends and family. iThemeOS has a free trial mode allowing you to make 10 changes. Register the application for unlimited use for just $10.95. It's cheaper than CandyBar!! |
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Iconographer 2.5MScape Software freeware |
Iconographer is a fully-featured icon editor. It allows you to both change the icons of items and to edit the icon resources used by various programs. Iconographer has been created from the ground up to deal with many icon formats, including: classic Mac OS (8-bit icons only), Mac OS 8.5+ (32-bit icons with 8-bit icons), Mac OS X (128 x 128 icons in .icns files), Windows and Windows XP (.ico files), and Mac OS X Server (48 x 48 icons in .tiff files). Due to its flexibility, Iconographer is useful to both beginners and advanced users. It can be used for a wide range of tasks, ranging from simply creating some customized folder icons to editing complex resource files for an application to converting icons between platforms. Iconographer is a freeware product. |
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Pixadex 2.0Panic / The IconFactory $18.95 shareware |
Pixadex is to icons as Apple's iPhoto is to images. Pixadex lets you import, organize and search huge numbers of icons quickly & easily. Pixadex lets you store all of your icons in a single place, organized into collections that you create. This is the program icon lovers everywhere have been waiting for. Arrange icons by a host of attributes including: Name, Date, Author, URLs & more. You can even change the order of the icons in the collection by simply dragging and dropping. View attributes such as background color and size settings are all saved on a per collection basis as well. And best of all, when you save an iContainer to send to a friend, those settings go along for the ride! Do you want to keep your icons on a seperate partition on your hard disk? Or better yet, want to take them with you on your iPod? Pixadex's new movable library feature lets you select where Pixadex stores its icons. Move an existing library to a different location or select an alternate library stored on an external drive or iPod. It has never been easier to make use of Windows-based .ICO files on the Macintosh. Simply drag and drop them into Pixadex and the program instantly converts them for you. Want to send your favorite Mac icons to your friend on her PC? No problem. Export those fancy OS X icons for Windows XP, 128x128 resources and all! |
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IconBox 1.5ChickenByte $12.95 shareware |
IconBox is an iPhoto like application that helps you store and manage your icons, the way iPhoto manages your pictures. It allows you to browse through your collection of icons using libraries, preview the icons at any size and export them to a variety of formats, with the click of a button. You can search for and sort your favorite icons by name, description, keywords, author and copyright information. IconBox also allows you to order your icons manually by dragging them around. |
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CandyBar 2.0Panic / The IconFactory $12.95 shareware |
CandyBar makes it easy to customize Mac OS X's trash can and a host of other system icons. Replace the Dock's Finder icon, toolbar icons, media, drives, network icons and others. Most changes require a simple log-out and back in to apply and some only require the Dock to be restarted. CandyBar does the work so all you need to do is decide which icons look best on your desktop. Version 2.0 adds the ability to change application icons and even other icons buried within application bundles such as default document icons and even toolbar icons. Replacing icons with CandyBar is as simple as dragging and dropping your favorite icon. Replace icons one at a time by hand-selecting your favorites or simply double click an existing iContainer to swap them all at once. Drag icons from the Finder or from Pixadex right into the user interface, and when you want to revert to your originals, CandyBar makes that a snap too. |
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IconBuilder Pro 5.0The IconFactory $69.00 shareware |
IconBuilder Pro 5.0 expands the professional feature set that users have come to rely on for constructing modern icons. IconBuilder Pro is especially designed for use with Adobe Photoshop CS and Mac OS X. IconBuilder's ease of use, in combination with the power of Adobe Photoshop, gives artists unequalled flexibility and creativity when constructing icons for the Macintosh or Windows operating systems.
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Micon 1.1tin:b Software freeware |
Micon is a very simple application which makes it easy to add custom icons to files, folders, and applications. If you can't figure out how to copy and paste icons using the Finder's inspector window, or you just think it's too awkward, this tool is for you. |
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Skin-A-Dock 1.3Infinity-to-the-Power-of-Infinity donationware |
To be honest, Skin a Dock is not a practical application. But it is fun! Skin a Dock applies so called Skins to the Mac OS X Dock. Skins are visual styles which are certain to give your Mac workspace a personal touch. Customize the look of the Mac OS X Dock. Be creative and let your dock icons rest in water, fire or on a green lawn. Or give it a futuristic look. Finally! It has been more than half a year since this product was initially announced. In fact, we were almost ready to release it when the Jaguar update came along. Jaguar changed some things about how the Dock worked, so we had to put a lot of effort into Skin a Dock to make it work again. In the process, we made it into a Preference Pane, expanded the set of available skins, added in-program Skin archive access and make it work on icons that change dynamically. Skin a Dock was developed in cooperation with Matthew Bice and IheartNY.com. Matthew has set up a skin repository dedicated to Skin a Dock. You can submit skins you create by email. We intend to put together a guide which describes how to create your own skins, but until we do you will have to resort to reverse engineering the included skins. If you want help, just drop us an email! The skin repository can be accessed from the preference pane, or online. |
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Can Combine Icons 3.0Infinity-to-the-Power-of-Infinity $10.00 shareware |
The name doesn't give you enough? Anyway, that is just what it does. It combines several icons into one, in patterns you choose. It was designed for every-day use, and therefore enables you to create nice-looking, custom icons on the fly. Version 3.0 is a major upgrade. A lot of cool new things such as drop shadow and many new icons have been added. There is now a category of icons called "Templates" which contains icons that can easily be used to create standard-looking icons of different sorts. Another cool thing is that there are new patterns that use OpenGL to create icons with cool 3D effects! In addition, the Library has an added feature that allows you to create your own categories to store your favourite icons in. To top things off, there are major performance gains throughout the application and some other bugs have been fixed. Possible uses include:
To make creating batches of similar icon designs easier, the program includes a feature allowing you to create all possible combinations of the dropped icons and save them to the same destination. |
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Flying Icons 1.0Infinity-to-the-Power-of-Infinity donationware |
Flying Icons is a tribute to the fantastic Aqua Icons screensaver that shipped with the original Mac OS X. In Jaguar, it was "replaced" by the also-cool Flurry saver. Apart from the basic functionality present in Aqua Icons, Flying Icons has some additional features. It allows you to select a folder or an IconFactory iContainer as a source of icons. In fact, for optimum performance and utility, use of an iContainer is recommended (because of less disk activity). It also features some more advanced options, that allow you to modify how the icons behave. The maximum number of icons is 100 (in Aqua Icons it was set to 30). In addition, Flying Icons can run on two screens simultaneously. Aqua Icons only supported one screen. Of course, many of these options come with performance penalties, but should run within a few percent CPU on recent high end desktops and portables (it was developed on a PowerBook G4). |
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icon2ico 1.0b2Infinity-to-the-Power-of-Infinity donationware |
A small utility that will convert your Mac icons to Windows XP icons. The utility is free and part of the public domain. Source is available. Download size is just 50kB. That's about all you need to know. |
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MacBoot 1.0Infinity-to-the-Power-of-Infinity donationware |
In Jaguar, the usual happy mac icon was replaced with a big 128 x 128 gray Apple icon. It turned out that it was possible to hack a system file to change it to something more personal. At first, the procedure was a bit difficult for the average user, but soon tools were created to aid in the process. MacBoot allows you to change the boot image to any 128 x 128 image, including those downloaded from InterfaceLIFT. |
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FinderIconCM 2.2Pixture freeware |
Contextual menu plugin for Mac OS X that lets you copy/paste/clear icons from selected items (volumes/folders/files) without opening the Finder's Inspector window. FinderIconCM can handle multiple items with one operation. It also lets you view the icon image in detail. The Paste function works not only with icon data but also with PICT data in the clipboard. |
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