{"id":48456,"date":"2025-07-11T15:23:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T19:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=48456"},"modified":"2026-01-22T14:56:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T19:56:38","slug":"macos-tahoes-folder-icon-customization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/11\/macos-tahoes-folder-icon-customization\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS Tahoe&rsquo;s Folder Icon Customization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/inside\/macos-tahoe\/tips\/how-folder-emoji-customization-works-in-macos-tahoe\">William Gallagher<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/inside\/macos-tahoe\/tips\/how-folder-emoji-customization-works-in-macos-tahoe\"><p>It&rsquo;s not like it&rsquo;s going to take you long, since there are just two elements to this:\n<\/p><ul><li>Changing a folder&rsquo;s color<\/li><li>Adding either an icon or an emoji to the folder<\/li><\/ul><p>In this case, icons and emoji don&rsquo;t sound all that different &mdash;  whichever you choose, you end up with a symbol appearing on the folder. But there are differences, and at the least, having a choice of both gives you scope to go crazy with customizing everything.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/samhenrigold\/status\/1943054412345143593\">Sam Henri Gold<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/x.com\/samhenrigold\/status\/1943054412345143593\">\n<p>Figured out how to apply any arbitrary SF Symbol to a folder in Tahoe.<\/p>\n<pre>xattr -w 'com.apple.icon.folder#S' '{\"sym\":\"camera.viewfinder\"}' some\/folder\/here<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This also works with <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/samhenrigold\/status\/1773118887791313114\">private symbol names<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/x.com\/samhenrigold\/status\/1943054412345143593\">\n<p>also because emoji labels are just handled as strings, you can put anything in the emoji config thing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>For example:<\/p>\n\n<pre>xattr -w 'com.apple.icon.folder#S' '{\"emoji\":\"HIMOM\"}' some\/folder\/here<\/pre>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/07\/macos-tahoe-26-developer-beta-3\/\">macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 3<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/19\/macos-tahoes-new-theming-system\/\">macOS Tahoe&rsquo;s New Theming System<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"macos-tahoes-folder-icon-customization-update-2025-10-04\">Update (<a href=\"#macos-tahoes-folder-icon-customization-update-2025-10-04\">2025-10-04<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2025\/09\/18\/customising-folders-in-tahoe\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2025\/09\/18\/customising-folders-in-tahoe\/\">\n<p>macOS 26 changes the behaviour of folder icons in three ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Default folder colour is now set in Appearance settings. In most cases, that will be left to use the Theme colour.<\/li>\n<li>Applying a coloured Finder tag to a folder now changes the colour of that folder, as well as displaying a coloured dot.<\/li>\n<li>Folders can be customised additionally using the <strong>Customise Folder&#8230;<\/strong> command in the Finder&rsquo;s File or contextual menu.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/eternalstorms\/status\/1970465687887081828\">Matthias Gansrigler-Hrad<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/x.com\/eternalstorms\/status\/1970465687887081828\">\n<p>And why does the Dock not show my custom folder icons? (It works for the Downloads folder, though)<\/p>\n<p>it&rsquo;s a shame the Dock can&rsquo;t access that data to display the folder icons correctly, though.<\/p>\n<p>Also just tried <code>NSWorkspace.shared.icon(forFile: )<\/code>, and it also just returns the plain folder icon.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"macos-tahoes-folder-icon-customization-update-2026-01-22\">Update (<a href=\"#macos-tahoes-folder-icon-customization-update-2026-01-22\">2026-01-22<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@tuomas_h\/115937692442699393\">Tuomas H&auml;m&auml;l&auml;inen<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@tuomas_h\/115937692442699393\">\n<p>One of the new things in Mac OS Tahoe is the ability to customise folder icon colours, which is nice, but&#8230; the slider for setting the luminance of the colour works backwards. Make it make sense. <\/p>\n<p>The only way to reliably get the colour you want is to mix it in another app and then use the colour picker to sample it from there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William Gallagher: It&rsquo;s not like it&rsquo;s going to take you long, since there are just two elements to this: Changing a folder&rsquo;s colorAdding either an icon or an emoji to the folderIn this case, icons and emoji don&rsquo;t sound all that different &mdash; whichever you choose, you end up with a symbol appearing on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-07-11T19:23:48Z","apple_news_api_id":"b1944bb4-e610-426f-bb5d-aee60964ceb5","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-01-22T19:56:41Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AsZRLtOYQQm-7Xa7mCWTOtQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[69,1777,257,1902,545,30,2742,1822],"class_list":["post-48456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-cocoa","tag-dock","tag-emoji","tag-extended-attributes","tag-icons","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-sf-symbols"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48456"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50770,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48456\/revisions\/50770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}