What's the deal with icons in OS X?

luca · January 5, 2003 12:49AM

Sheesh, it's like pulling teeth trying to change icons in OS X! I found a custom icon I liked for iChat, so I copied it and pasted it over iChat's default icon. Then I found another that I thought I might prefer, so I pasted the new one over the old one... and nothing happened. So I tried first pressing the delete key and then pasting the new icon in... and the old icon appeared. Restarting finder doesn't work, even logging out doesn't work. Only restarting the entire computer will allow me to see the new icon that I pasted in.

What's the deal with this? I mean, the icon isn't a very big deal, but you'd think they wouldn't go around breaking features that worked for years and years up until now. It's one thing when WindowShade and spring loaded folders were completely cut out, it's another when they can't properly get a certain feature to work. It's just one of those little things that makes OS X seem like it's not really done yet, as if it's still kind of in beta.

defiant · January 5, 2003 1:10AM

I explain some of it in <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=002061"; target="_blank">here</a>.

defiant · January 5, 2003 1:12AM

all of it, to be exact.

Apple has a KB article to it.

<a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107343"; target="_blank">Mac OS X 10.2: Pasting Custom Icons Over Custom Icons Does Not Always Work</a>

luca · January 5, 2003 1:39AM

Thanks. I'll be more careful to make sure I delete the old one before pasting the new one on.

Still kinda frustrating. Oh well, I'll live.

defiant · January 5, 2003 2:09AM

at least I didn't get a baseball bat on my head for not reading your whole post, like last time. I read it this time too, though.

foad · January 5, 2003 4:37AM

Thanks Defiant...helped me out as well.

defiant · January 5, 2003 5:56AM

no problem, I'm glad to help- just look at Genius Bar....

paul · January 5, 2003 7:49AM

[quote]Originally posted by Defiant:

no problem, I'm glad to help- just look at Genius Bar....

horned_frog · January 5, 2003 11:46AM

Ugh, deleting the old icon doesn't work for me (I'm trying to do it with OmniWeb).

ghost_user_name · January 5, 2003 12:02PM

[quote]Originally posted by Horned_Frog:

Ugh, deleting the old icon doesn't work for me (I'm trying to do it with OmniWeb).<hr></blockquote>That is because OnmiWeb (among a few others like Fire) will refresh its icon from the actual icon file in the package contents. You need to replace that file for changes to permanently take effect.

foad · January 5, 2003 4:18PM

One thing I also noticed was if you paste your icon and it replaces with the old one...just close every window and open a new Finder window. On a couple of occasions I have seen the new icon in there.

What a weird bug.

pyr3 · January 5, 2003 8:22PM

I've had a couple of occassions were it wouldn't delete the custom icon. It would just stay there until I rebooted, after I tried to delete it. Even the info window didn't remove the icon and revert to the old one. I think that relaunching Finder might have fixed that as well, but I don't change icons much so I haven't run into that too often.

unremarkable · January 6, 2003 10:35AM

I can't actuallly paste over my Word icon. Why's that?

mac's girl · January 6, 2003 1:12PM

[quote]Originally posted by unremarkable:

I can't actuallly paste over my Word icon. Why's that?<hr></blockquote>

i had to tinker around in terminal with some unix gibberish (haha, to me it is) in order to change some of the icons. i forget who told me how to do it... but i dont think it was Defiant (sorry dude

). the only one i still cant get to change is AIM!!! leave it to aol...

What's the deal with icons in OS X?

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