How do I change the icons and labels in the MacOS boot manager?

Question

I freshly installed Big Sur with Windows 10 Boot Camp on a late-2013 MacBook Pro Retina with a replaced SSD. When I hold down the option button at boot, the options are listed as "EFI Boot" (Windows 10) and "Macintosh HD", but both are using external drive icons instead of internal. Under MacOS, the icons for both drives appear correctly as internal drives. I tried changing drive names in diskutil, renaming the drives in the MacOS Disk Utility and under Windows, placing .VolumeIcon.icns files in various places, and various bless commands.

I'm asking this to answer my own question, I couldn't quite find a correct solution in any one spot. Pay close attention to the folders involved, this was the important part.

Answer 1

Rename “EFI Boot” in Startup Manager:

Open up a Terminal and use the following commands:
diskutil list - use this to find the Windows EFI partition
sudo diskutil mount disk0s1 - whereas "disk0s1" is your EFI partition
sudo bless --folder /Volumes/EFI/EFI/Boot --label Windows - whereas "Windows" is your label of choice

Rename “Macintosh HD” in Startup Manager

Similar to above, but:
sudo bless --folder /System/Volumes/Data --label MacOS - whereas "MacOS" is your label of choice

Missing/Wrong Boot Manager Icon

Reboot in recovery mode (command+R at boot) and use a terminal to run
csrutil disable
… which disables SIP protection

For Mac side:

sudo cp /System/Library/Extensions/IOStorageFamily.kext/Contents/Resources/Internal.icns /System/Volumes/Preboot/.VolumeIcon.icns

This will change the Mac/Macintosh HD boot icon to the default internal drive icon, but you can just copy whatever .icns file you wish to that location. See other posts for info on making your own .icns files.

For Windows side:

sudo diskutil mount disk0s1 - Whereas disk01 is the name of your Windows EFI partition from above
sudo cp /System/Library/Extensions/IOStorageFamily.kext/Contents/Resources/Internal.icns /Volumes/EFI/.VolumeIcon.icns

Don't forget to enable SIP protection again, if you wish, by booting back into recovery mode and using:

csrutil enable

Answer 2

thanks for parfpony, I have just few comments about BigSur 11.1

1. If anyone face the problem that the following command is not changing the "windows" to new the volume label "WIN", after mounting EFI volume :

sudo bless --folder /Volumes/EFI/EFI/Boot --label WIN

just replace the "label" by "file", that is ..

sudo bless --folder /Volumes/EFI/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi --file WIN

or

sudo bless --folder /Volumes/EFI/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi --file "WIN 10"

quotes are used in case your new label(WIN 10) contains spaces.

2. Related to Icon replacement it can be done easily by using old method without using any scripts or terminal command (for both Mac and windows volumes):

   a. Use Finder preferences --> General ---> Show hard disk, to display your
   volumes on desktop.

   b. Select “Macintosh HD” Volume (MacOS volume) then use right click --> “Get Info”--> select the small hard disk image located in upper left corner.

   c. Choose any icon, with an extension *.icns and NOT Jpeg or PNG images, and drag it on the small image (step b), you will see that the desktop volume icon is automatically changed.

   d. You can use “image2icon” application from apple store to convert your favourite images to icons (1024X1024 pixel) with an extension “.icns”.

3. If you installed "BigSur 11.1" from scratch or clean install, the account name chosen will be the macOS volume name displayed directly in boot start up
   manager and no need for renaming.

   So Easy !!!!!!!!

Answer 3

barfpony, I really appreciate your help! You made me sign up for StackExchange to leave this comment & supplementing answer for others searching for Google.

1. If the terminal command written above is not working, try disabling SIP first. As barfpony mentioned, press command (⌘)+R at boot and enter Recovery mode. Open terminal, and type csrutil disable to turn SIP off.

2. Reboot, and login to your macOS account. Then, open Terminal.

3. Try typing in the Terminal commands written by barfpony.

   3-A. Changing the label of 'Macintosh HD'

   sudo bless --folder /System/Volumes/Data --label macOS - whereas "MacOS" is your label of choice

   3-B. Changing the icon of 'Macintosh HD'

   sudo cp (location of the new icon) /System/Volumes/Preboot/.VolumeIcon.icns

   This command will change the default disk icon to the new icon. If it is hard for you to type the location of the new icon, just drag-and-drop the new icon into terminal window. This will generate the location of the file automatically.

4. Once its done, reboot and press and hold the option (⌥) to check the new label and icon appears.

5. If you succeeded, do not choose either macOS or Windows disk; press command (⌘)+R. This will open Recovery Mode.

6. Once Recovery mode is on, open Terminal again, then type csrutil enable to turn SIP on again.

Everything I have written was tested on macOS Big Sur 11.1, with 16-inch MacBook Pro (2019). However, I did not test changing the EFI boot partition since my BOOTCAMP disk did not have the same issue.

Thanks again, barfpony.