This insures that you can revert things back to normal if you mess something up. icns files first, and preferably, back up the entire Mac beforehand with Time Machine or your backup method of choice. If you have any intention on changing a system icon or several of them, do back up the original. Modifying system icons is generally not recommended, particularly for novice users. For example, we used one of these hardware icons in a walkthrough demonstrating how to change the Dock Finder icon. This folder also happens to be where a whole bunch of high quality Apple and Mac hardware icons are located, which are used by System Profiler, for networking, and by iTunes, but you can copy them and use them for other purposes too if you feel like it. You can use the ‘search’ function to break it down by specifics, narrowing down by ‘Folder’ will show you only the default folder icons used on the Mac: You’ll find the directory contains tons of “.icns” files, these are the raw icon files for various system icons, including the default folder icons used for Applications, Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Developer, Generic (the default for a new folder), Group, Library, Music, Movies, Pictures, Public, and quite literally every other default icon, like mounted external drives, network volumes and computers, iPhones, Macs, and just about everything else.Īll of the Mac OS X default icons are stored here. The folder is best viewed in “icon” view with a reasonably visible icon size, which perhaps isn’t too surprising considering this the system icon folder. Choose “Go” and you’ll instantly be brought to the appropriate resources folder containing all system icons for Mac OS X that are found throughout the Mac.Paste in the following complete file system path in Go To Folder:.Open a new Finder window from the Mac OS X Desktop and hit Command+Shift+G (or go to the “Go” menu and choose “Go To Folder”.How to Locate & Access All Mac OS X System Icons We’ll cover the latter method, since it’s usually the quickest and most user friendly. To get there and to find the Mac OS X system icon resource files, you can either manually navigate to the given system folder from Finder, use the Terminal, or better yet, use the excellent Go To shortcut and jump their immediately. System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ For those who just want to poke around and already know why, the location of Mac OS X system icons is the following path:

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