MacOS – How to change a smart folder’s icon without changing the default icon

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I want to add a smart folder for each label in the sidebar (I believe there is no way to directly to add the labels, so I have to resort to smart folder). However, all of them have the gear icon in the sidebar, even if I changed its icon and the icon is correctly shown in finder itself.

Note that I am NOT changing the smart folder's default icon, I just want to change them to a red, green, blue … dots, just like the labels.

How can I achieve this?

More info:
Changing the icon itself does not affect sidebar look. I tried to change to a red circle:

How it looks like in fider.

Info window

It's info

However same look at sidebar:

Sidebar

Best Answer

How can you change the colors of the glyphs in the Finder sidebar, while leaving them as their default icon? You can't (unless there's a third party tool about which I am unfamiliar). However, you can change the default icons to your heart's content. Here's how:

As a test, I created a Smart Folder that finds all PDFs in my home directory. The default glyph for the Smart Folder is a gear, as noted in the OP.

Here are the steps to change the glyph:

  • Locate the directory /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources
  • Locate the file called SidebarSmartFolder.icns

enter image description here

  • Rename it to SidebarSmartFolder_old.icns
  • Paste into Resources folder the glyph you want to use in its place.
  • Rename it to SidebarSmartFolder.icns
  • Reboot your Mac.

You'll see now that my Smart Folder glyph in the sidebar has changed to the new one.

enter image description here

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