Custom File & Folder Icons

Give any file, folder, or workspace root its own emoji or symbol. It replaces the plain document icon in the sidebar, and Finder shows the same icon.

Give a file your own icon

Right-click the file or folder in the sidebar, choose Change Icon…, and pick an emoji or symbol. It shows up in the sidebar and in Finder right away.

For a whole workspace, right-click its header at the top of the section rather than a file row — the menu item is the same.

Find the emoji or symbol you want

Type in the picker’s search field. On the Emoji tab, search the name of the thing — “rocket”, “tree”, “book”. The Icon tab holds Apple’s symbols and matches their names, so try “star” or “folder” rather than “favorite”.

Setting icons on a lot of files

Icons go on one item at a time, and the picker makes the repeats quick: the ones you use a lot gather in a Frequently Used row at the top, one click away.

Take an icon off

Right-click the item and choose Remove Icon. The trash button in the picker does the same thing.

Icons travel with the file

Rename or move a file in Finder and its icon comes along. Copying keeps it too. Your writing is never touched — the icon isn’t stored in the text.

For developers: git and disk space

Git doesn’t carry icons. Check a file out fresh from a commit and it comes back plain, so you’ll need to set it again.

Setting an icon on a folder makes macOS create a hidden file inside it, named Icon plus an invisible character. Finder won’t show it, but git lists it as untracked. Add this to your .gitignore:

Icon?

The ? matches that invisible character — and any other single character, so a file named Icons or Icon1 gets ignored too. Check your repo for one of those before adding the line.

Every icon is stored beside the file it belongs to, and an emoji icon takes about ten times the space of a symbol from the Icon tab.