Macspiration 83
Beyond the Basics- Customize Your Mac Part One

In past Macspirations I’ve covered how to change icons, change desktop pictures, and a lot more to customize the appearance of your Mac. All of those customizations are great, but there are a lot of other ways to customize your Mac that aren’t so simple. At least, they appear that way. This mini-series of Macspiration articles will tell you about some of those customizations, and how to make them.

For example, this article will discuss how to change icons. Yeah, I know that is easy! It is easy for most icons, but there are other icons, or System Icons, that are a lot harder to customize. The simple cut and pasting of icons in an info window won’t cut it. I’m talking about the icon for every CD or DVD you insert into your computer, or the icon for new folders, or the Finder icon. Get the picture? How about the Trash Can?

All of those icons would be untouchable for most people, unless you download a free program I just discovered called LiteIcon. LiteIcon is by Julien Ramseier and available at freemacsoft.net. The site is not in English, so you might want to find it at MacUpdate or your favorite Mac software site.

LiteIcon is great, and so easy to use. When you open the program you are presented with the following window:

In the window you are presented with the different system icons you can change. If you don’t see what you are looking for right away, click one of the categories at the top of the window. All you have to do now is drag and drop the new icon onto the old icon, and click “Apple Changes” when you are done. You will need an administrator password. To see your new icons click the “Relaunch Finder” button in the top right of the window. Some of the changes will require you to restart your computer to take effect. If you don’t like your changes, you can click “Restore all icons…” from the “File” menu, and apply the changes.

If you are looking for some new icons from your system I suggest Interface Facelift. So now you can change almost any icon in your computer, and you don’t have to know any programming code to do it!