Changing a file or folder icon using the Terminal

Question

How can I change or set the icon for a file or folder, in the terminal, do I need to use a scripting language?

Answer 1

I almost started a bounty on this, because I didn't manage to change the icon of a folder using @mankoff's answer. But I found a solution.

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To change folder's icon you don't point Rez -append tmp.rsrc to the folder but a special Icon\r file inside the folder. If you haven't set a custom icon to the folder before, the file probably will not exist, but Rez creates it on–the–fly. Deleting the Icon\r file will remove the custom icon, so to prevent accidents it is good to be hidden.

These are the modifications to the mankoff's answer:

# Append a resource to the folder you want to icon-ize.
Rez -append tmpicns.rsrc -o $'myfolder/Icon\r'

# Use the resource to set the icon.
SetFile -a C myfolder/

# Hide the Icon\r file from Finder.
SetFile -a V $'myfolder/Icon\r'

Answer 2

You'll need the Developer Tools installed, and then the following might work. This takes the graphic in icon.png and applies it to file.ext.

# Take an image and make the image its own icon:
sips -i icon.png

# Extract the icon to its own resource file:
/Developer/Tools/DeRez -only icns icon.png > tmpicns.rsrc

# append this resource to the file you want to icon-ize.
/Developer/Tools/Rez -append tmpicns.rsrc -o file.ext

# Use the resource to set the icon.
/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a C file.ext

# clean up.
rm tmpicns.rsrc
# rm icon.png # probably want to keep this for re-use.

Answer 3

Check out setfileicon (source code), an utility created by Damien Bobillot.

Download the binary here: http://maxao.free.fr/telechargements/setfileicon.gz

After unpacking the file, make it executable:

chmod +x setfileicon

Then you can use it as follows:

./setfileicon "my-icon.icns" "my-file-or-directory"

Answer 4

I have a github project where I create AppleScript "droplets" from [shell/bash, python, perl, ruby, etc.] scripts that take file paths as arguments. I wrote this bash function for changing the icon of an folder (because AppleScript bundles are Folders with a .app extension).

replace_icon(){
    droplet=$1
    icon=$2
    if [[ $icon =~ ^https?:// ]]; then
        curl -sLo /tmp/icon $icon
        icon=/tmp/icon
    fi
    rm -rf $droplet$'/Icon\r'
    sips -i $icon >/dev/null
    DeRez -only icns $icon > /tmp/icns.rsrc
    Rez -append /tmp/icns.rsrc -o $droplet$'/Icon\r'
    SetFile -a C $droplet
    SetFile -a V $droplet$'/Icon\r'
}

Once defined, you call the function with 2 arguments:

replace_icon /path/to/AppleScript.app /path/to/icon.png

or

replace_icon /path/to/AppleScript.app http://i.imgur.com/LmUvWqB.png

As you can see the second argument can be an image on your system, or a URL.

Also, as I say with every bash script, you should always include this for safety:

## No bash script should be considered releasable until it has this! http://j.mp/safebash ##
# Exit if any statement returns a non-true return value (non-zero).
set -o errexit
# Exit on use of an uninitialized variable
set -o nounset