How to get rid of iTunes ugly new blue icon

The most recent versions of Apple’s overstuffed iTunes app made an almost universally hated change by switching to a boring, blue icon. I was among the masses who wanted to figure out a way to switch the iTunes icon to something better.

It’s not as easy as it used to be to swap icons. There are programs you can download to ease the move but here’s a simple way to switch the entire package of icons that are built into iTunes without too many complications. It does involve mucking with the app’s package contents so if that sounds too complicated to you, please skip this post.

First, you need to go online and find some better iTunes icons that are packaged together in a file with the extension icns. That’s not hard. I started at this article on TwisterMc called “32 iTunes Replacement Icons.” There are a billion alternatives out there. Not everything you’ll find is packaged in the easy-to-use icns format. I ended up using icon artist Kevin Andersson‘s green set (he also did a blue set). You can see his whole deal here.

Once you’ve downloaded the replacement set of icons, in the finder navigate to the Applications folder, right-click on iTunes and choose “show package contents.” This then reveals the many, many files that collectively make up the iTunes program. Navigate down to the folder called Resources.

Before we can make changes to the components, we need to change the permissions on this file. So right-click on the Resources folder and choose “Get info” from the menu. Click on the lock at the bottom right of the Get info box, enter your password and then switch the permissions at the bottom of the box for everyone from “Read only” to “Read & Write.”

Now, for safekeeping you should make a copy of the existing iTunes.icns file and/or rename to something like oldiTunes.icns. Then just drag in the new iTunes.icns file that you downloaded above. Close everything and navigate back to the Applications folder where the new icon should be proudly on display (it actually took a few seconds for the new icon to show up on my system — your mileage may vary). I also switched the permissions back to “Write only” when I was finished.