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I'm have a MacBook Pro (x86_64) with OS X 10.8.5 (fully patched). When I got the MBP, the iTunes icon was a cool blue icon.

Recently, Apple changed it to red. The psychologist tell us red indicates anger, defiance and hostility, and its a bad color. Its why USAir changed their color scheme from the shades of red to shades of grey. I did not like red, but I did not feel compelled to move.

I got updates this week (July, 2015), and Apple changed the icon again:

enter image description here

I despise that cartoony look, and now I am compelled to move. That cartoony look is one of the reason I have held back from OS X 10.9 upgrade for my personal equipment (and even one of the reasons to abstain from iOS upgrades). This is a personal preference, and I understand only a subset of folks feel the same way.

I've been through iTunes preferences, but I don't see a way to change the icons.

How do I change the iTunes icons? Or how do I use the previous, blue icon?

Related, other reasons to abstain from the upgrade includes all the untested features and broken features that got added to 10.9. Quod erat demonstrandum: iCloud Keychain and CVE-2015-1065. My keychain was never at risk through this vector, and it was a conscious decision to avoid the risk.

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There are many ways to do this. Here are a few...

IMO The best way is to replace the actual AppName.icns file with the one from the older version, in this case it's: /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/iTunes.icns

Select the application bundle and control-click (right-click) > Show Package Contents, then navigate to the AppName.icns file shown in the pathname above. Note: After replacing the AppName.icns file one may need to run killall Finder in a Terminal to force the updated AppName.icns file to show properly everywhere. If it's not showing properly in the Dock afterwards run killall Dock in a Terminal.

Another way is to paste an image into the App's Info Sheet after selecting its icon at the top left of the Info Sheet. Select the application bundle then control-click (right-click) > Get Info or ⌘ -I.

Or use a third-party app that can assign an new image/icon to the application bundle.

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  • Does Apple make the past icons available? If not, where do I get the old blue icon that Apple probably claims a copyright or trademark over?
    – user83961
    Jul 8, 2015 at 13:04
  • /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/iTunes.icns - that's kind of a neat trick, but kind of scary too. That means code signing can be bypassed for the package. More correctly, its a lack of semantic authentication. Lack of semantic authentication was one of the causes of Android's Master Key flaw. It was even a problem back in the 1990s, with SSLv2 and SSLv3. Its too bad we are not learning from our mistakes....
    – user83961
    Jul 8, 2015 at 13:04
  • I routinely replace application bundle .icns files, using scripts I've written, for many application that I do not like the icons for whatever the reason and have never had any problem afterwards running those applications. So I'd have to say code signing either doesn't come into play at this level or it's broken. Now I'm not redistributing anything, this is just for use on my own system.
    – user3439894
    Jul 8, 2015 at 13:09
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    As to getting old AppName.icns files, I get them from the Apps themselves either from a copy I have running in a virtual machine or if need be download one of the OS Updates or Application Updates (where applicable) and extract them from the package. The latter method is kind of a waste of bandwidth so it just depends on how much you dislike the new icon as to what length you'll go.
    – user3439894
    Jul 8, 2015 at 13:25

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