FolderIcon is a sleek, premium macOS utility designed to help you organize and personalize your workspace by customizing folder icons with ease. Whether you want to color-code your projects, add descriptive SF Symbols, or use your own logos, FolderIcon makes it simple and fast.
- Exact Color Matching: Colors are applied via a luminance-mapping technique — the folder keeps Apple's native shading, gloss and volume, while the hue is exactly the color you picked. No blue tint bleeds through.
- Solid & Gradient Tinting: Full HSB control for a solid color, or blend two colors at any angle. 24 handcrafted solid presets and 16 gradient presets.
- Opacity Control: Folder opacity starts at 100% and can fade to fully transparent without revealing the original blue system folder.
- SF Symbols Integration: Browse 64 built-in symbols, or open Apple's SF Symbols app, copy any symbol name, and paste it into FolderIcon. A selectable example and Copy button make the workflow clear; invalid names are detected before rendering.
- Emoji & Text: Add up to four characters — a short label, several emoji, or a combination. Choose from 72 quick emoji presets; plain text follows the selected icon color/style.
- Custom Images & SVG: Choose or drag and drop PNG, JPEG, WebP, and SVG images (including transparency), or paste SVG code copied from SimpleIcons. Color and Inverted styles also work with SVG artwork.
- Icon Style Controls: Adjust icon size, position, color, and Vibrant, Original, Color, or Inverted rendering from the Style tab.
- History: The latest 100 applied icons are saved automatically. Click any entry to re-apply its exact settings, or remove it with the ✕ button.
- Real-time Preview: See exactly how your folder will look before applying changes.
- Bulk Processing: Drag multiple folders at once to update them all in one click.
- Reset to Default: Restore original folder icons at any time.
- Native Look & Feel: A focused macOS-native interface built with SwiftUI and AppKit.
Build and install directly from the command line:
git clone https://github.com/ChornyiDev/FolderIcon.git
cd FolderIcon
# Build the release binary
xcodebuild -project FolderIcon.xcodeproj \
-scheme FolderIcon \
-configuration Release \
-derivedDataPath build_output \
build
# Install to /Applications
cp -R build_output/Build/Products/Release/FolderIcon.app /Applications/
# Optional: clean up build artifacts
rm -rf build_output
# Launch the app
open /Applications/FolderIcon.appOne-liner (copy-paste the whole block):
git clone https://github.com/ChornyiDev/FolderIcon.git && cd FolderIcon && \
xcodebuild -project FolderIcon.xcodeproj -scheme FolderIcon -configuration Release -derivedDataPath build_output build && \
cp -R build_output/Build/Products/Release/FolderIcon.app /Applications/ && \
rm -rf build_output && open /Applications/FolderIcon.app- Open
FolderIcon.xcodeprojin Xcode 16 or newer. - Press
Cmd + Rto run the app orCmd + Bto build it.
- Add Folders: Drag one or more folders into the application window.
- Choose Style:
- Color: Pick Solid or Gradient tint, adjust hue/saturation/brightness, or change opacity from its 100% default.
- Icon: Choose an included SF Symbol or paste any valid SF Symbol name; enter up to four emoji/text characters; or choose, drop, or paste SVG code for a Custom image.
- Style: Refine icon size, position, color, and rendering mode (Vibrant, Original, Color, Inverted).
- History: Browse previously applied icons; click one to re-apply its settings.
- Apply: Click the "Colorize" button to apply the new icon to your folders instantly, or Reset to restore the default folder icons.
- Language mode: Swift 5
- Framework: SwiftUI & AppKit
- Platform: macOS 14.0+
- Icon rendering: Luminance-map recolor (
CGBlendMode.multiplyover the folder silhouette) for pixel-accurate colors with native shading. - Sandbox: Read/write access is limited to folders explicitly selected by the user.
Run the unit test suite from Terminal:
xcodebuild test \
-project FolderIcon.xcodeproj \
-scheme FolderIcon \
-destination 'platform=macOS'The tests cover the SF Symbols grid, emoji/text input limits, PNG/SVG image loading (including dropped SVG data), default and zero-opacity rendering, history pruning, and history state restoration.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
Created with ❤️ by ChornyiDev