Change your Menu Icons on your Macintosh

Gee, I don't know why I have a hard time finding the TimeMachine icon...

August 22, 2011 / Updated: August 22, 2011 / Lena Shore
Filed under:

I use plenty of those cute little icons at the top of my monitor screen. But, sometimes I want to change one of them.

This tutorial will teach you how to change your Menubar icons. In this example, I will change the Time Machine icon:

  1. Navigate your computer to : /system/library/coreservices/menu extras
  2. You should probably back up your “menu extras” folder in case you need to replace them.
  3. Find the area you want to to edit. In my case it is the “TimeMachine.menu”.
  4. To edit one of them, right click on it and select “Show Package Contents”.
  5. Open the “Contents” folder then the “Resources” folder and, replace the files. The image files are stored as a pdfs, which you can edit in graphic programs like PhotoShop. You could also find an existing icon set on the internet and use those. When replacing the files you’ll probably need to give your system password.
  6. After you have replaced the files, restart your computer (or logout and back in)

NOTE: As of now (as I can best tell) you can’t change any of the System Core icons to anything other than gray scale images. Even when changing an icon to red, it renders in gray scale. They don’t allow for color. Probably due to Apple wanting to keep a streamlined look to the menu bar (*shakes fist at Apple*). However, any of the third party icons you can change to any color you want.

Archives

Categories