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User profile for user: mylesdevon
mylesdevon Author
User level: Level 1
13 points

Maintaining transparency when creating custom icons

There was a long and helpful thread here about the necessity to create square images when making custom icons for folders and hard drives in Mojave.

Custom folder icons are blurry - Apple Community


My problem is related, and happens even when the custom icon is square. Even if my custom icon is a png or gif file, saved as transparent, the borders of the icon on my desktop are white, not transparent - something that was never a problem pre-Mojave.


Has anyone found any solutions for this? Not a world-shaking problem, but annoying if you have a dozen hard drive icons hanging off a Mac Pro.


Thanks,


Myles


Posted on Feb 1, 2020 3:48 AM

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User profile for user: VikingOSX
VikingOSX
Community+ 2024
User level: Level 10
116,615 points

Posted on Feb 1, 2020 5:11 AM

Folder icons are really made from Apple Icon Image format (.icns) files, not .png. A typical .icns has 10 images within it — five each at 72 dpi and five each at 144 dpi. The dimensions range from 16x16 to 512x512.


If you have created a 512x512 300 dpi image in a vector graphics tool where you have exported it with a transparent background as a .png image, you can open that in Preview, and then export to a .icns image format. You will need to press the option key when choosing the image format menu in Preview's export panel to access the iCNS selection.


I also have a Python program that uses Objective-C to set an .icns icon on a designated folder. Using an Apple Accounts.icns image, and a new Test folder on my Desktop, here is the result with transparency preserved:


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User profile for user: VikingOSX
VikingOSX
Community+ 2024
User level: Level 10
116,615 points

Feb 1, 2020 5:11 AM in response to mylesdevon

Folder icons are really made from Apple Icon Image format (.icns) files, not .png. A typical .icns has 10 images within it — five each at 72 dpi and five each at 144 dpi. The dimensions range from 16x16 to 512x512.


If you have created a 512x512 300 dpi image in a vector graphics tool where you have exported it with a transparent background as a .png image, you can open that in Preview, and then export to a .icns image format. You will need to press the option key when choosing the image format menu in Preview's export panel to access the iCNS selection.


I also have a Python program that uses Objective-C to set an .icns icon on a designated folder. Using an Apple Accounts.icns image, and a new Test folder on my Desktop, here is the result with transparency preserved:


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Maintaining transparency when creating custom icons

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