Do you use multiple back up drives? (you should be!) Or rather, use an external drive for media archiving purposes or something of the like?
If, like us, you prefer to have different icons that reflect what is found on that particular drive (eg. an ‘A’ for back up drive A, or a camera for the photo archive), then read on for a quick how to on changing the icon yourself. This will make it easier for you to navigate and distinguish what will be found on that particular drive the next time you plug it in.
We have previously covered the topic of folder/drive icons and what you can do with them (which you can read here), however for those requesting it, we decided to quickly show you how to once again change a folder/drive image.
How to change the icon image:
Changing the Icon image:
Using Get Info:
Right-click on the intended icon image, click Get Info (CMD+I) and highlight as below. Hit CMD+C to copy into clipboard. Then, highlighting the desired target folder or harddrive, as earlier, press CMD+V to paste the icon image on to the target.
Be sure to click on the Folder top left of the Info panel so that it’s highlighted as below:
Using Preview:
If the above doesn’t work, open the desired file with Preview (I was working with a PNG this time around). Within Preview, click Edit -> Select All (CMD+A) then Edit -> Copy (CMD+C) to copy the image into clipboard. Then as above, highlight the desired target folder within Get Info, press CMD+V to paste the icon image on to the target folder.
The result is a personalised icon that stands out.
Where to find the images?
You can use any image under the sun to change your folder icon. There are some limitations, such as how detailed the image is, as well as the size of the image itself (when becoming an icon it may become cramped).
Essentially though, you can get icons from anywhere either online, or from your photo library in iPhoto on your computer.
A good place to start your icon search if venturing online is The Icon Factory. Whilst some icons sets, you need to pay for, there are an abundant amount of freeware icons you can download for mac.
No Hard Drive visible?
Both OS X Lion and Mountain Lion don’t initially show your Mac’s HardDisk. In order to be able to bring that back to the desktop, so it becomes visible, simply do the following:
- Click on the desktop or Finder
- Press both the ‘Command’ key and the Comma key (,)
This window should then open up for you.
From there, all you have to do is check the box that reads ‘Hard Disks’. Feel free to tick the other boxes if you so desire those particular items on your desktop also.
Easy.
Renaming Drives
Once drives show up on your desktop, you are then able to easily rename them.
here’s how:
- Click on the drive, so it’s highlighted
- Click again (on the name of the drive) so that the formatting around the selected drive changes like so.
Now you are free to name the drive whatever you please. In order to save your changes, just click the desktop background, or hit the ‘return’ key
