How to change the icon on an external drive

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How do I change the icon on an external drive? I have a Samsung T5 SSD but following the instructions (copy from source Get Info dialog, and paste into destination Get Info dialog) has no effect and no feedback. This used to work in the past, but since then I've upgraded to newer external drives (and have updated macOS several times). Has something changed that now makes this impossible?

I've tried this now with several drives (various hardware) and am unable to change the icon on any of them. This used to work before (1) updating macOS and (2) reformatting the drives with APFS/GUID. Has one of those changes made it impossible to change the icon on external drives?

Best Answer

EDIT: As @David Anderson mentioned, the icon is stored in .VolumeIcon.icns in the root of the external drive. This is a hidden file by default, so press ⌘ + Shift + . to see hidden files. By default, the .VolumeIcon.icns file does not exist, and if it does, the icon in the file will be used.

If you want to see all default icon files for modification purposes, go to /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources. Then, you can move or modify any icon of your choosing to the drive.

Changing the icon of external drives still works on macOS. Here are the steps to do so.

  1. Download an image to your computer
  2. Open the image with Preview.app
  3. Press ⌘ + C to copy the image to your clipboard
  4. Select your external drive (Go to finder then Shift + ⌘ + C to see your external drives)
  5. Select your drive and press ⌘ + I
  6. Right-click the icon in the upper-left-hand corner of the popup window
  7. Press ⌘ + V to paste the image to the drive
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