We’ve all seen a classic Mac desktop: The outer-space or mountain-like background filled with medium-sized blue folders. It doesn’t look bad at all, but I’m sure more than one of you wish you could customize at least a few aspects of that appearance.
Well, there are actually quite a few ways to do this. This time, we will show you a couple of simple and fast tips that you can implement in just a few minutes that will completely change your desktop’s look using your Mac’s own built-in options.
Let’s get going:
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- Again, just like with our folders, click the little icon in the upper-left corner so it has a blue border around it and then paste (“Command + V”) the clipboard’s contents. You will be prompted to enter your user password to change an application’s icon, but once you do, your new icon will be used instead of the old.
- Right-click on the folder icon you wish to customize and click “Properties” Click on the “Customize” tab, go to the “Folder icons” section and then click on “Change icons” Click “Browse” and find the customized icon you wish to replace it with click “Ok” Enjoy your new customized folder icon!
- You’ll find the directory contains tons of “.icns” files, these are the raw icon files for various system icons, including the default folder icons used for Applications, Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Developer, Generic (the default for a new folder), Group, Library, Music, Movies, Pictures, Public, and quite literally every other default icon, like mounted external drives, network volumes and computers, iPhones, Macs, and just about everything else.
Arrange and Adjust How Your Desktop Items are Displayed
The Show View Options is a tool that allows you to easily customize your Mac’s desktop appearance to a great degree. To open it, right click on any empty part of your desktop and select Show View Options.
This will open a settings panel where you will be able to adjust a series of elements of your desktop’s look and feel. Here’s what you can do with them:
Icon Size and Grid Spacing: The first slider, the one for Icon Size is pretty self-explanatory. Sliding it left or right will either decrease or increase the size of your desktop icons respectively. The other slider (Grid Spacing) might be a bit harder to explain unless you actually use it though: It allows you to adjust the space between the icons on your desktop.
Using both of these sliders you can have, say, a desktop with big icons, each quite apart from the other or a desktop with small icons all very close together.
Text Size and Location: The next section of the Show View Options panel allows you to select the size of the text of your Mac’s desktop icons, as well as to choose if it will be located to the right or to the bottom of each icon or folder.
My suggestion: If you plan to display more than just the name of the icon or folder (more on that on our next point), place the text to the right, since it gives the text more room and things look better organized that way. Otherwise just leave text at the bottom.
Additional Item Information: The last section on the Show View Options panel lets you choose if you would like to see more item information about your folders or other elements lying around. Examples of this can be your hard drive’s available storage, the number of items in a folder and more.
Additionally, you can choose if elements like image icons show as mini-previews of files or as generic icons.
Last but not least, you can also use the Sort by: option to choose how items on your desktop are sorted.
Change How Icons and Folders Look Like
Are you tired of the old, blue color that all your Mac’s folders sport by default? You are not the only one. Thankfully, changing not only the color, but the entire icons of folders and drives lying around on your desktop is a snap.
To do it, first find and download a folder icon set that you like. Here’s a website were you can find some great ones for free for example. Once downloaded, open the image you want to use in Preview, choose Select All from the Edit menu and then click on Copy on that same Edit menu.
Now, right-click on the folder which icon you want to change and select Get Info from the available options. Click on the folder icon at the top left of the Info panel and then choose Paste from the Edit menu. Your folder now has completely new look!
That’s it for now. Use these two tips, couple them with a new desktop image and see how your entire Mac desktop acquires a new, fresh personality. Enjoy!
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#desktop #Lists
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Few things are as frustrating as trying to start your Mac and ending up with the dreaded Mac folder with a question mark. You’ve probably tried using keyboard shortcuts like CTRL+R, CTRL+Option+R, or Shift+CTRL+Option+R, but you still get the flashing folder icon on startup.
While this may strike fear into your heart as a Mac user, there are known causes for it, and tried and tested solutions that will help you get your Mac back to normalcy.
Follow along to find out why you’re getting the folder with the question mark in the middle of the screen, and how you can resolve the problem. While this is issue is more prevalent among older Macs, we shall try to address the same for new Mac models as well.
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Click here to see our macbook articles pageCauses of Flashing Mac Folder with Question Mark
There are several reasons why the folder with a question mark appears on your Mac’s screen:
- Your Mac can’t find a bootable volume. That means it can’t find its startup disk, so it can’t boot or start up. Probably you previously started up your Mac from an external disk and later unplugged it, or its hard drive just failed terribly, so it’s having trouble locating its system folder or boot directory.
- Corrupt macOS.
- Corrupt system files.
- Hard disk drive has failed catastrophically.
- The external disk you boot from may be off or disconnected.
- The ribbon cable connecting the drive to the motherboard may be damaged. This cable sits between the bottom case and optical drive, and if the case has indentations in the same area, the cable may be the problem.
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Read MoreBoot Your Mac From an Install DVD (For Older Macs)
This process forces your Mac to boot from the install DVD placed in the optical drive. For that, you must follow these steps:
Step 1: Place the install DVD that came with your Mac in the optical drive and reboot. You can use that disc, or if you have a later macOS version, use a newer disc for the same purpose.
Step 2: Once you hear the boot chime, hold down C key on your keyboard or the Option key until you see the Install Disk or Apple logo show up.
Note: Boot from the recovery partition if you’re on 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion or 10.9 Mavericks, and then repair the OS 10.7 or 10.8 partition using Disk Utility.Step 3: When your Mac starts up, choose the language you’ll use, press Return on your keyboard, and an Installation window will open. Ignore this window and click Utilities and then click Disk Utility.
Step 4: If you see your hard disk on the list, click your macOS partition for the hard drive, and then select First Aid tab.
Step 5: Next, run Repair Disk. To enable this button, click on your hard drive’s macOS partition. If this fixes any issues, run it all over again until you see the green OK, and then run Repair Permissions.
Step 6: Finally, use the Startup Disk to select your hard drive to restart your Mac from the hard drive. If it’s not recognized under Disk Utility, it’s probably dead.
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Read MorePut Your Mac in Recovery Mode
If you’re trying to boot from your Mac’s internal drive, you need to shut down the computer and then start it up while holding down Command+R keys until the globe or Apple logo appears. That will put your Mac in Recovery Mode, and then you can change the startup disk by selecting the option from the Apple Menu.
Recovery Mode comes handy when your Mac won’t boot normally because the startup disk is damaged or corrupted.
That could be caused by corrupt files or mild power surges you’re not aware of, but it fixes the issue without you having to go to extreme lengths, such as performing a reinstall of your macOS.
Note: You can boot using an external Mac startup disk or bootable installer if macOS Recovery doesn’t work.Replace the Disk
If the Mac folder with a question mark appears because of your disk has failed, the only thing you can do is to replace the disk and use the time capsule or another backup device you’ve been using to recover your data to the new disk.
How To Change Icon For Folder Mac
Backup Data and Reinstall macOS
If Disk Utility can’t repair your startup disk, you may have to reformat it. Before doing that, take a backup of any important data from the disk before erasing everything stored on it. You can take the steps below to take a backup of your data to an external drive if you don’t have a recent data backup for your startup disk:
Step 1: Connect an external drive that’s similar in size or larger than your startup disk. Erase the external drive using macOS Recovery and then install macOS to it. Select the external disk that you want to erase, not your startup disk.
Step 2: Once macOS is installed, your Mac will restart automatically from the external drive. When you see the Setup Assistant, choose the option you want to use to move data from another disk, and select the startup disk on your Mac as the source from which to migrate data.
Step 3: After migration, follow the setup assistant instructions to the end, and when you see your desktop, confirm that all your data is present on the external drive.
Step 4: Erase your startup disk using macOS Recovery and reinstall macOS (don’t select your external drive). After erasing the disk and installing macOS, your Mac will restart automatically, and the setup assistant will appear. Copy your data to your startup disk by selecting the option to migrate data from a Time Machine backup or another disk, in this case your external drive.
Note: If you can’t erase the startup disk or reinstall macOS, take your Mac for repair to an Apple Genius or authorized service provider.Get Your Mac Back
We hope you now know what to do when you find the flashing Mac folder with a question mark on your screen. Try the fixes above and let us know what worked for you.
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Next up:Want to reduce boot time for your Windows PC? Our next article shows you how to do that using Quick Startup.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Read NextHow to Use Quick Startup to Reduce Windows Boot TimeAlso See#apple
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