Modding Mac OS X

Customizing Standard Icons

TOOLS YOU NEED

For working through the examples in this section, you’ll need the following application:

• CandyBar (http://www.panic.com/CandyBar)

After using Mac OS X for a while, the standard icons used in Finder windows tend to pass beneath our radar. Take a second to revisit them. There’s the picture of the house for the home directory; the letter A made out of a pencil, a paintbrush, and a ruler for applications; the G-clef for the music folder; and so forth. These pictures are nice—as well they should be. They’ve been designed by Apple, and passed by their team of human engineering gurus. Still, as with everything Mac OS X, just because it’s standard doesn’t mean you can’t mess with it.

In this section, you’ll discover how to use a great shareware program called CandyBar (http://www.panic.com/CandyBar, $12.95) to change the look of your standard icons. CandyBar is a shareware application that lets you swap custom icons for the more standard fare. You can change the look of your toolbar icons, your garbage pail, and the icons used for standard folders. To install, download a copy of CandyBar, mount the disk image, and drag the application to the Applications folder.

1. Run CandyBar from the Applications folder. The CandyBar window (shown in Figure 1-20) opens.

   

   Figure 1-20. CandyBar’s main window.

2. Use the scrollbar at the right side of the window to scroll through ...