How to personalize folder icons on your Mac with custom color, emoji, and symbols
Learn how to personalize folders on your Mac with color, emoji, and symbols without downloading any apps or editing folder icons manually.
macOS has supported setting a picture as a folder icon for decades now. You can also change the folder icon background. And with macOS Tahoe 26, you can further customize the appearance of folder icons with color, emoji, and various symbols.
Apple is currently testing macOS Tahoe and will release it publicly this Fall. To get this feature earlier, install the macOS Tahoe beta on a separate partition for testing, alongside your current macOS version.
For example, a study emoji could denote a folder with your college PDFs and Word documents. For a folder containing your family pictures, a family emoji will do the trick. Likewise, a globe symbol could represent a folder with your travel photos. You can even change the folder icon color without specialized apps like Folder Colorizer.
Add a symbol or emoji to a folder icon on your Mac
Follow these steps to add any emoji or glyph to a folder icon on macOS Tahoe.
1) Right-click or Control-click a folder and hit Customize Folder in the menu.
2) Browse built-in symbols across categories such as People, Animals & Nature, Food & Drinks, Activity, Travel & Places, Objects, and Symbols. Or, click the Emoji button and use the search field to find the right emoji.
3) Click anywhere outside the emoji picker to close it and save the changes. The selected emoji or symbol will be stamped in the center of the folder icon.
Change the color of a folder icon
On older macOS versions, adding a tag to a folder would show a small colored dot before folder name in the Finder. On macOS Tahoe 26, applying a tag automatically colorizes the folder icon with that color. Right-click or Control-click a folder and select a tag in the menu to change the color of the folder icon instantly.
Revert the folder icon to the default blue appearance
Right-click or Control-click a folder and choose Customize Folder in the menu, then click the Clear button at the bottom to remove any symbol or emoji. To use the original blue folder icon, remove all tags by hitting the tag icon at the top.
Custom folder icons on iCloud Drive
You can also customize folder icons in your iCloud Drive with color, symbols, or emoji. The changes are automatically visible in the Finder on your Mac and the Files app on your iPhone and iPad running iOS 26 or iPadOS 26.
As of now, these custom folder icons don’t show up in iCloud Drive on Windows and on the web.
Also, check out: How to change and customize app icons on Mac
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/06/26/customize-mac-folder-icon/
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