If there’s one detail that caught my attention about macOS 11 Big Sur, it’s its icons. From this version of macOS 11, they all become square with rounded corners (something called squircle in English). While waiting for the official arrival of the system, as well as the adaptation of all third-party applications, we can modify the ones we have very easily. Let’s see how to do it.
How to change macOS Big Sur icons to make them consistent
Changing an app’s icons in macOS is pretty straightforward. This does not change at all as it is a new version of the operating system, so if you already knew the steps, you can try it by yourself. If you don’t know or remember what it looked like (here we have an in-depth tutorial on it), follow these steps:
- First of all, prepare your icon to modify it, select it and press cmd + C to copy it.
- In Finder, go to the Applications folder.
- Choose the app you want to change icon. Right click on it and click Get Info.
- As an alternative, just press the cmd + I keys.
- A window will open with more information about the chosen application, at the top left you will see a mini-icon.
- Click on it and press Command + V to paste the previously copied icon.
- Close and the change will take effect.
If it’s an Apple app, type iMovie like the one in the example, macOS will ask you to enter the password administrator. In any other application, you can do this without a password. As a recommendation, it is better to use .icns or .png formats.
A handful of unofficial icons for modifying your macOS Big Sur apps
As we said at the beginning, app developers are not yet required to adapt their icons. It will be from September or October when it comes out macOS 11 Big Sur to the public and they can also launch their adapted applications. We understand that the only ones that will be required are those that “go through” the Mac App Store and not those that are downloaded through other channels.
Meanwhile, from 9to5Mac, they’ve already collected a few proposals. Not too many icons, but it is used to gradually adapt our applications:
- Stijn de Vries created seven icons: Nova, Step Two, Twitter, Github, Pages, Keynote and Visual Studio Code.
- Bas van der Ploeg did the same with eight different icons: Cura, NodeMCU-PyFlasher, Sketch, Skype, Slack, Telegram, Transmission and Tweetbot.
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The Pages and Keynote icons are, in fact, the official ones presented by Apple but not yet in the apps. Following the tutorial we saw Before, we can adapt these applications to be more in line with the « spirit » of macOS 11 Big Sur.
