Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Aliases: Icons in Two Places at Once

Highlighting an icon and then choosing File→Make Alias (or pressing

-L), generates an alias, a specially branded duplicate of the original icon (see Figure 2-7). It’s not a duplicate of the file—just of the icon; therefore it requires negligible storage space. When you double-click the alias, the original file opens. Because you can create as many aliases as you want of a single file, aliases let you, in effect, stash that file in many different folder locations simultaneously. Double-click any one of them, and you open the original icon, wherever it may be on your system.

Designing Your Own Icons

You don’t have to be content with the icons provided by Microsoft, Apple, and whoever else wrote your software. You can paste new icons onto your file, disk, and folder icons to help you pick them out at a glance.

The easiest way to replace an icon is to copy it from another icon. To do so, highlight the icon, choose File→Get Info, click the existing icon in the resulting window, and then choose Edit→Copy. (Close the Info window, if you like.)

Now click the icon to which you want the copied picture transferred. Once again, choose File→Get Info. Click the icon in the dialog box and this time choose Edit→Paste.

If you’d rather introduce all-new icons, you’re welcome to steal some of the beautifully designed ones at http://www.iconfactory.com and the icon sites ...