How can I change Finder's sidebar icons in macOS?

Question

Without using a 3rd-party application, how do I go about changing the icon in the sidebar for the Developer folder?

When I click on "Get Info" for this icon it's showing the icon does have the hammer icon but it's not showing in El Capitan in the sidebar when I add it over there?

Does anyone have a solution or can refer me to an article that will provide me with some direct information on how to add/edit this?

Answer 1

I found a SIMBL plugin that changes the icons on the sidebar to custom ones. By removing the icons from the configuration file, it doesn't replace any icons with custom ones, but only allows the icon of the folder itself to be displayed on the sidebar. Keep in mind that this will also change your home folder, All My Files folder and all other folders to display in colour.

Download modified version here

Remember to use mySIMBL for the plugin to fully work: mySIMBL download

Disclaimer: The original plugin is made by W0lfschild and is open source. I do not own this file, I have only provided a version with pre-edited config files. Original version is on GitHub.

Answer 2

I'd love to be able to change the icons without an add-on. You get better visibility and much faster access.

Best thing I've managed to do for easy visibility is to add emoji to the names of the folders.

But of course you likely don't want to add emoji to the folders themselves. Instead you can put an alias to the folder in the sidebar, and have that alias contain the emoji.

I created ~/Library/Sidebar Aliases/ folder and dropped a number of aliases in there (Command-Option drag the folder). Then I renamed those to include whatever emoji icons I want to help visibility, and added those aliases to the sidebar.

Works perfectly:

Bonus: You can make the names themselves more descriptive. I've got a number of network folders in my sidebar and they all have the same name "Photos" for example.

Using an alias, I can have my smb://<server>.local/Collating/Photos/ folder appear in the sidebar as 📸 Collating Photos, without touching the actual folder name itself. 👍

Important Note: The only noticeable downside to this approach is that you can no longer drag and drop files into the sidebar aliases, as you can when there's an actual folder in the sidebar. Not a big issue for me, but worth noting.

Answer 3

Just create a Developer folder in your user folder and the developer icon will automatically be on the folder, and when we add the folder to sidebar, it will also automatically be an icon.

Answer 4

There is at least one officially supported, modern way to change the sidebar icon for a folder.

If you enable a Finder Sync Extension and set it's directoryURLs to contain that folder, the app's custom sidebar icon should be used instead of the default icon.

This is the method Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. use to change the Finder sidebar icons for their syncing folder.

This does not work for changing the icons of certain folders, such as the root of your System directory or your home folder. But these locations often already have their own custom sidebar icons already.

Finder Sync Extensions

You can also use the extension point’s API to add a sidebar icon for the monitored folder.

You will only be able to have one custom icon per Finder Extension app, so if you were to use this method to customize several folders you would need to use multiple Finder Sync Extensions. A single app won't be able to arbitrarily customize multiple folders.

Answer 5

In XtraFinder Preferences, check "Show colorful icons in the sidebar". A side effect is that this will make every icon colorful, maybe you like it.

Answer 6

Only items you can activate from Finder > Preferences > Sidebar have custom sidebar icons. If you manually add folders, such as the Developer folder, to your sidebar favorites, they will show up with a generic sidebar icon, even if the folder has a custom Finder icon.

The only way to change this would be with hacks as described by e.g. Keyboard_Gamer's answer.

For more clarity, a 3rd-party app can add a finder extension to get a custom icon. This is why dropbox, google drive, onedrive and other folders might have custom icons.

Answer 7

Something I discovered by accident today on macOS Sonoma 14.7

Similar to what Hrvoje mentioned in their answer: Name the folder in a way to match one of the automagic apple icons and add it to your sidebar.

But you can then symlink/alias your folder with a custom name and that seems to make it magically show under the different name.

From Terminal

ln -s ~/Developer ~/your-custom-name and have it then appear in the sidebar

From the finder window

1. Select the folder
2. Do one of the following:
   • Right click and choose Make Alias
   • In the Menu Bar choose File > Make Alias
   • Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl ^ + Command ⌘ + A
3. Type your custom name

Answer 8

I am using OS Catalina.10.15.7 on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) I change my sidebar icons as follows (This is an example changing the Network icon) :

1. Create various size .png files using my original icon's .png file by opening it in preview and using Tool/Adjust size. I created 8x8,16x16,32x32,64x64 and 8x8@2x,16x16@2x,32x32@2x,64x64@2x. They MUST all be in the format icon_8x8.png or [email protected] etc. The @2x files are copies of those next largest. eg. duplicate the 16x16 file and change it to [email protected] create a folder for them :

rename the whole folder SidebarNetwork.iconset and put if somewhere like on the desktop.

2. In Terminal navigate to the desktop then use sudo iconutil -c icns SidebarNetwork.iconset to convert the folder to an .icns file and it will appear on the desktop nearby.

The remainder is at your own risk. Disabling SIP is a risk and changing System folders/files as well.

3. Disable SIP in terminal from recovery mode https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/disabling-and-enabling-system-integrity-protection and reboot. Then in terminal use sudo mount -uw /to allow for change of permissions

4. Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources . Scroll down and you will see the Sidebar .icns files. Make a copy of the one you want to change in case you want to revert to the original and put it somewhere safe!!!

5. Using 'get info' for SidebarNetwork.icns , unlock and add your own, logged in admin user allowing Read and Write permission.

6. In Terminal use sudo cp /Users/you/Desktop/SidebarNetwork.icns /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/SidebarNetwork.icns to replace the .icns file with your own. Remember to change 'you' to your own user folder name.

7. use all of these to clear caches and refresh everything :

   sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store
   sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store
   sudo rm -rf /private/var/folders/*/*/*/com.apple.dock.iconcache
   

   and killall Dock; killall Finder

8. Reboot into Recovery, enable SIP in terminal again,reboot and (at least in my case) wait a while for the network icon to re-appear and be changed. Mine took 5-10 mins (no idea why)

9. All the other Sidebar icons are in the same folder and I have changed them using this method on both OS High Sierra and OS Catalina.