Change App Icon in Stage Manager

I changed the icons of some applications, natively by moving an .icns file on the application. It changes the preview in the finder, in the dock, in the notifications, but not in the stage manager! However I checked the content of the application and nowhere can we see the old icon. I assume the stage manager is using a cache directory somewhere?




MacBook Pro (M2 Max, 2023)

Posted on Jul 27, 2023 3:28 PM

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Posted on Jul 27, 2023 7:13 PM

thomasync wrote:

I changed the icons of some applications, natively by moving an .icns file on the application. It changes the preview in the finder, in the dock, in the notifications, but not in the stage manager! However I checked the content of the application and nowhere can we see the old icon. I assume the stage manager is using a cache directory somewhere?


A SafeBoot Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies


Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 27, 2023 7:13 PM in response to thomasync

thomasync wrote:

I changed the icons of some applications, natively by moving an .icns file on the application. It changes the preview in the finder, in the dock, in the notifications, but not in the stage manager! However I checked the content of the application and nowhere can we see the old icon. I assume the stage manager is using a cache directory somewhere?


A SafeBoot Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies


Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.



Jul 28, 2023 10:23 AM in response to leroydouglas

I kept on looking and I realized that when you change the application icon, it doesn't modify it. It simply creates an invisible "Icon?" file in the bundle.


The real application icon is the one specified with the "CFBundleIconFile" attribute in the Info.plist file.

But you can't modify the .icns file, otherwise it breaks the application's signature.


So it's just a MacOS bug, where the "Icon?" file doesn't take over for Stage Manager. Hopefully it'll be solved for Sonoma.


I'll keep looking to see if I can modify the .icns file with xattr or something, but it looks complicated just to change icons.

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Change App Icon in Stage Manager

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