Filed under: Freeware, Leopard
FolderTeint: darkness for your desktop
When it comes to my desktop and the icons that sit upon it, I have a fondness for darkness. It's not because of a fatalistic world view or any gothic tendencies on my part, I simply like my work to pop out against a non-distracting background. The black desktop is easy, but I've been looking for a fast and easy way to darken my icons without a lot of bells and whistles. And then I stumbled upon FolderTeint.
FolderTeint is free and Leopard-only. Using its slick interface, you can select which folders to affect and apply different effects to each selected set. The simplicity of the interface is what I like the most. The adjustment HUD only allows you to change the contrast, saturation and brightness of the icons, with an optional overlay color for hue control. It's perfect for making your system folder icons a nice, dark shade of grey. But to answer the question before it's asked: yes, it's also simple to make every folder a different shade of hot pink. Fortunately for those who regret their iconic 80s tribute later, you're always a click (and a logout) away from restoring the stock icons.
FolderTeint is free to download and use, but I'm certain that author Thomas Zoechling would gladly accept some PayPal love.
Update: Please read the comments carefully before downloading. While I've had great success with changing and reverting icons on a MacBook Pro running 10.5.1, not everyone has had such luck. Also be sure to note the author's response in the comments!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Evan said 1:32PM on 2-07-2008
His site is slllllooooooowwww....
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Mike said 1:46PM on 2-07-2008
Can this be used on dock icons/folders as well?
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Chad Zeluff said 2:02PM on 2-07-2008
Can someone PLEASE tell me how to achieve HIS gray color? Ive been struggling for awhile. Mine always comes out super wierd.
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Chris said 2:11PM on 2-07-2008
Kernel Panic!
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christophercjensen said 2:20PM on 2-07-2008
quite neat. Wish it did alias folders as well though...
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Scruffy Doo said 3:45PM on 2-07-2008
Hey what gives? It deleted my original folder images and didn't replace them! Now what?
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Alfresco said 4:56PM on 2-07-2008
Time Machine
Brett Terpstra said 4:59PM on 2-07-2008
That's bad, and hasn't been the case for me. While I can't offer any direct support for the product, I'm curious what happens when you go into the adjustment panel and choose "Restore Default Icons"?
weichsel said 5:43PM on 2-07-2008
Hi all!
I am the author of that little tool.
I don't know where this bug comes from, but if anyone is experiencing problems, please use the built in "restore default icons" feature.
If this doesn't work either, you can always restore your icons manually.
FolderTeint created a backup in "~/Library/Application Support/FolderTeint/Backup" at its first start. (~ is short for /Users/USERNAME/)
OS X stores the folder icons in "/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/". (To access the content of "CoreTypes.bundle" use "Ctrl-Click" -> "Show Package Contents".
Version 1.0.2 needs some more testing (hopefully i can track down the "disappearing icons" bug).
If you are experiencing any problems, please send me an email containing a description of your issue and details about your machine (Hardware, OS X version)
Brady Myers said 5:00PM on 2-07-2008
Yeah, what the hell - my folders are gone too! That might be something to mention to users before linking to an app...
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Owen Waring said 5:27PM on 2-07-2008
Personally, to solve that problem of focusing on a visually oversaturated interface I really like Freeverse's think: http://freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=7013
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Tyler Darko said 5:59PM on 2-07-2008
If your icons aren't changing, a simple reboot will fix the problem.
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Scruffy Doo said 6:12PM on 2-07-2008
Hey thanks "weichsel"
Much appreciated! Nice to see a developer act so swiftly, hope this help iron out any bugs :)
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Jesse Hogue said 8:19PM on 2-07-2008
While this is a good idea, I would not recommend this piece of software. Every single time I logged out after making changes, my computer would hang, I was forced to hold the power button in. If it happened once, I wouldn't worry, but it happened every single time. Be warned, stay away.
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Jeff said 9:25PM on 2-07-2008
I just wanted to say that I used this, dialed the saturation almost all the way down, the contrast near the saturation, and the brightness higher than the contrast, and my folders have never looked better! Thanks TUAW for posting this, and to weischel for creating this. Very cool.
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Sascha said 10:52AM on 2-08-2008
Great tool. I understand the basic way of changing the individual icons but it is awesome to have a nice tool doing just that... Marvellous work weichsel! Thank you...
A hint for users experiencing problems: maybe close all applications before applying the changes?!
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Sascha said 10:53AM on 2-08-2008
Ahh another thing: I've dialed the saturation down all the way and upped contrast and brightness a good way - nice result test it ;)
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Trimalchio said 2:21PM on 2-08-2008
One unfortunate problem is that you cant really change the colors independently of the previous color. Specifically I couldnt get the effect used in the icon at the bottom, black folders would be awesome if one could make the folder identifiers lighter... maybe a negative button or something like that.
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