How to change all icons on Mac OS Classic?

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Dan
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How to change all icons on Mac OS Classic?

Post by Dan »

I know you can do the copy-paste from a picture to a file for individual file icons, but is there a way to change an icon for a generic category (e.g. folders, documents, drives, trash). Like, is there a place in the System Folder which stores all the icons?

I have a feeling this is a really obvious thing, but I can't seem to find a way to do it.

(Side note: Is there also a way to change the default Finder view? Like list all as detailed list instead of icons?)

-- Dan
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adespoton
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Re: How to change all icons on Mac OS Classic?

Post by adespoton »

Yup; grab a copy of ResEdit, and hack away at the Finder file. You can also customize a bunch of other stuff by hacking the System file. This is for pre-copy/paste variants of Mac OS, and works all the way back to System 0.97.

Oh yes, there are also Inits/Extensions and applications that let you do this, but it's generally safer/more stable to just use ResEdit and keep a backup.
Dan
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Re: How to change all icons on Mac OS Classic?

Post by Dan »

Never heard of ResEdit :|
Hacking at the Finder file seems to be stable enough; doesn't seem like any data is lost.
Kept a backup anyways.
Eccellente. Grazie.
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adespoton
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Re: How to change all icons on Mac OS Classic?

Post by adespoton »

ResEdit is the de-facto Resource Editor for Mac OS. There's a third party one called Resourcerer, but ResEdit was free from Apple and can be found just about everywhere. It lets you edit icon resources, as well as dialogs, buttons, mouse pointers, background patterns, fonts, and pretty much anything else. It also accepts templates so that if there's a resource type it doesn't understand, you can create a template and then it will let you edit the resource.

Super ResEdit 2.6 (I think) was a community re-work that had the most popular templates bundled into the actual application (including a hex editor for the DATA resource, support for compressed icon resources, and a few other things).

If you're trying to change the look and feel of a classic Mac OS, you need to get and familiarize yourself with ResEdit.
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