How Mac OS Associate System Folder with Special folder Icon

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I just ran into this question. I think there must be a plist file or something similar. Here is what I found:

When customizing a plain folder with my own icon file, there is an invisible file created in the folder called "Icon^M", which I think is a kind of icon file?
But system "special" folder like /Applications, /Users/Documents, and so on, do not have this kind of file in it, and are displayed as special icons instead of stock plain blue icon.

So, how does Apple associate special folders and their special icons? I think there is some system plist file to associate these two, like:

…
< key >/User/Documents< /key >
< value >pathToIcon or binaryRepOfFileAndPath< /value >
…

Where can I find the file? Thank you!

Best Answer

The special folder .icns files, e.g for Applications, Library, System and User, etc. are stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources and the info.plist file to control these is /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Info.plist.

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This isn't an answer but it does add some information. The value associated with the com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector key, 1935819875, is a decimal representation of the file type. In hex, it is 0x73624463, which are the ascii letters 'sbDc'. This file type is described in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Info.plist. This is a binary plist that you can convert to xml using plutil -convert xml1 -o Info.plist.xml Info.plist. Looking in the Info.plist.xml file, you can see a dictionary at the top level. Inside this there is a key "CFBundleDocumentTypes" and an array of dictionaries as its value. In this array is a dictionary that contains the following:

<dict>
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    <string>SidebarDocumentsFolder.icns</string>
    <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
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    <key>CFBundleTypeOSTypes</key>
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    <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
    <string>None</string>
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</dict>

An interesting key/value pair in this dictionary is CFBundleTypeIconFile: SidebarDocumentsFolder.icns. This file can be found at /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/SidebarDocumentsFolder.icns and it contains the icons used for document folders.

I would think that changing the com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector value to a different value, or updating the dictionary for 'sbDc' to refer to a different icns file would get you on your way to having custom icons.

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Unfortunately the icons now appear to be hardcoded, it used to be the case that you could just name a folder Movies in your home folder and it would gain the icon but not anymore.

According to this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8380562/adding-buttons-to-finder-toolbar

DropBox are going to pretty extreme lengths to get their icon in the sidebar, using code injection.

In other words, I don't think it is possible I'm afraid.

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