Mail.app icon changes?

S

SuperMatt

Matthew Smith
Hello folks,
I want to change the icon for Mail.app - how can I do so while still allowing the little red numbers showing the number of unread messages to appear? Or is that just impossible? I wasn't sure how it generated the red number... a bunch of similar icon files with those little red numbers, or is it somehow pasted onto whatever the icon resource itself happens to be?

Matthew
 
I believe it's applied to the icon. So all you have to do is drag Mail.app out of the Dock, get info on Mail.app, paste your custom icon, and then drag it back into the Dock. The numbers should still be there when you get new e-mails.
 
I haven't done this with Mail.app, but I have with Fire. Fire has a special tiff file of the icon that it lays the numbers over. If you look in Mail.app you'll find all of the numbers and stuff. You can try just replacing the icon, but it may go back to the normal Mail.app icon in the dock when the numbers are overlayed. If that happens you need to find the icon's tiff in the Mail.app resources.

Does this make any sense?
 
Folks,
Thanks for the input! It got me thinking, and here is how I was able to do it.

1. I first tried to just copy the icon with "show info" in the finder and paste it over the mail.app icon in its show info window. This worked at first, but then after my first email came in, the icon went back to the old one permanently. (failure)

2. Downloaded iconographer! I opened up the icon file I wanted to paste in, went to the edit menu and copied the whole icon family. Then, I did a contextual-menu click on mail.app and did a "show contents" and in the resources was a file called app.icns - the icon set for Mail! Next, I just did a paste of the whole icon family, and it replaced everything! Make sure you paste the whole icon family, because it looks really funky to have a new icon and the old icon mask... very odd. (Success!)

By the way, the icon I used was a "message in a bottle" type icon from the "Life is Good" icon set, one of the 2000 or 2001 pixelpalooza winners for OS X icon sets, by: Charles Chéné <ch2@videotron.ca>! I just thought it was a cool mail icon, and it looks even cooler with the little number of unread messages on it!
 
super matt can you upload a picture of your new mail app icon without the numbers and then again with the numbers. I'm just curious what they look like


-Joe
 
Here is the image in the dock (maximum size) without the new mail indicator:

bottled-mail.jpg


And with the new mail indicator:

bottled-mail-new.jpg
 
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