how do i change my Safari icon

Highlight the item you wish to change. Get info on it. In the upper left corner of the get info window, you will see the original icon. Click on the icon and highlight it. Paste the new icon on top of that image and it should change it.

Some additional information:

In order to change the icon, you have to be the owner of the folder or item. If you're changing the icon for Safari, you would have to change the ownership permissions of the application form "System" to "yourself", then make the changes.

Or, you would have to log in as the root user to make the change. I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure that would work also.

Just having write permissions does not work for me. I can add myself in permissions with read and write privileges and I still can't change an icon on a system owned item. I have to change myself to be the owner before I can change the icon.

I keep shooting myself in the foot this week.

The custom icon file is created in the folder, so you need to have write permission for the folder that will get the icon - an application package itself is a (special) folder, so in this case all you need is write permission for the application. You don't need to change ownership though, I usually just change "everyone" to read/write and then back again after making the change. This also works for other Finder attributes such as a label color.

You need to have write permissions for the containing folder.

You're right Red

Changing everyone to read & write permissions does work also. So, you don't need to change the ownership. I never tried that.

Thanks for the lesson.