Using Hazel To Replace Application Icons

There was a time when every last bit of my OS was customized and themed. I moved away from constantly tweaking the appearance of OS X. After all, what Mac users got for sure is a beautiful system right out of the box. Still, in some cases I like to my customizations. For instance, some of my applications have a custom icons. What always bothered me was that I had to copy the files into the resources folder of an application after an update was released. Hazel is the perfect candidate for a scenario like this and like always, it saves you some time.

Example 1: Replacement icon set for Keyboard Maestro (with color conditions)

Jono Hunt has made a beautiful set for Keyboard Maestro users. You can download it here – just the menubar icon alone is worth the download.

In the example code below Jono’s “Keyboard Maestro Mac” folder is located in my Dropbox (after all I like to have the icons available on all of my Mac’s). On part of the icons need to be copied directly into the resources folder, the other half needs to go into the Keyboard Maestro Engine resources folder. We can easily do that with this shell script:

cp -rp /Users/YOU/Dropbox/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Mac/Menu\ Bar\ Icons/dark/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Resources/*.png /Applications/Keyboard\ Maestro.app/Contents/Resources/
cp -rp /Users/YOU/Dropbox/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Mac/Menu\ Bar\ Icons/dark/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Engine\ Resources/*.png /Applications/Keyboard\ Maestro.app/Contents/Resources/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Engine.app/Contents/Resources/
cp  /Users/YOU/Dropbox/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Mac/kmicon.icns /Applications/Keyboard\ Maestro.app/Contents/Resources/kmicon.icns
cp /Users/YOU/Dropbox/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Mac/kmicon.icns /Applications/Keyboard\ Maestro.app/Contents/Resources/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Engine.app/Contents/Resources/kmicon.icns

Just adjust the paths to your needs (I think Hazel will also accept ~/Dropbox/Keyboard\ Maestro\ Mac/). If you’re done head over to Hazel, add the Applications folder create the following rule:

I use this rule with some other apps like Dropbox, where I only changed the 16px of Dropbox and Dropbox photos folders to look nicer in the Finders list and column view, Evernote and some others. Be aware this doesn’t work with App Store applications. I’m sure there’s a way to make it work, but I haven’t dug into it.

Update - Example 2: Hazel setup without color conditions

Simplified the rule to work without color labels. I don’t use them anymore and I guess most of you don’t necessarily want to have any colors in their Applications folder either.

PS: There’s a good chance that the rule will still work even when you drop “set color label” actions. It’s a relict from when I used to group my Applications by color. You would have to enter a rule like “Date Last Modified is not Date Last Matched” instead.