Here’s what you should do instead. Open Finder first and choose Go> Go to Folder from the menus at the top of the screen (or press Shift-Command-G). Then copy and paste the following path in the box that’ll appear:
/System/Library/PreferencePanes
Like so:
When you press “Go” and collect $200…I mean, when you arrive at that folder, you’ll see all of the familiar icons from System Preferences, and you can follow similar steps to open and use those as I discussed in the previous article. So for example, to grab the Time Machine icon you’ll select that item from the Finder window first.
Afterward, press Command-C (Edit> Copy) to copy its icons to the clipboard. Then launch the Preview application and press Command-N (File> New from Clipboard). That’ll pop all of the sizes of those big beautiful icons into a new document, where you can manipulate or export them in many different ways.
As I mentioned before, my favorite thing to do is to select the size I want to use from the thumbnails in the sidebar and press Command-C. Then if I press Command-N again, I’ll get a new file in Preview with just my selected size.
Aw, lookit the cute little fella.
Finally, keep in mind that if you’re looking for a third-party System Preferences icon (like Adobe Flash), those don’t appear in the same place as Apple’s default ones. They typically live within /Library/PreferencePanes instead of /System/Library/PreferencePanes, and you may have to right-click on one and choose “Show Package Contents” to sift through and find the icons (which are usually in a subfolder called “Resources”). Whew!
In some cases, though, the preference pane icons that third-party vendors use aren’t as high-quality as the ones that Apple provides, so it may be easier to get the files from the developers’ websites if you need to refer to their products. OK, OK, I may be a little obsessed with using pretty images, but really, what is life about if not impressing people with gorgeous instructional icons?
You’re impressed with my System Preferences> General icon, right? LOOK AT IT.