One of the things I love the most about macOS is the Dock. It’s not exceptionally better than, e.g., the Windows taskbar, but it surely looks way better. However, if you find the static app icons on your macOS Dock boring, CharmBar may have just what you need.
CharmBar: Making Your Dock’s Visuals Stand Out
Changing an app’s icon on macOS is quite easy. Open the app’s info dialog (Command + I), drop an image over the top-left icon, and that’s it. However, these are still static. You may want something livelier or at least something you can customize.
That’s where CharmBar comes in. You can dynamically add decorations to any app’s icon, making it more yours. Or just more silly, we don’t judge. The options are many: you can add custom images, or any emoji available on macOS. Speaking of which, the app supports versions 13.5 and up.
Using CharmBar To Change App Icons on macOS
Using CharmBar is pretty straightforward. When opening for the first time, it asks for the license key (which costs $5) and accessibility permissions. After taking care of that, open the app through the menu bar icon and do the following:
Time needed: 5 minutes
- Select, from the list on the left, the app you want to customize.
- On the right, click on the + button.
- Select whether to add an emoji or a custom image. To choose a custom image, you must first add it to the app’s gallery—more on that in a bit.
- Select Add Emoji to open the emoji picker, or Add Asset to open the image list.
- The selected emoji/image will appear over the icon. You can use the buttons that appear to resize, flip vertically or horizontally, or rotate the selection.
- With the slider next to the icon, you can zoom in or out. If you’re using multiple customizations, you can arrange their depth with the list below the icon.
- To add images to CharmBar’s gallery (called “Assets”), click the photo pile icon in the top-left corner. Click Add asset on the bottom left and select the images to import.
NOTE
One thing that I have noticed is that the customizations are added as overlays. That means the “flourished” icon is not saved as a new image, but is rendered in real-time.
While this has advantages, such as a live preview of the changes, it also means the emojis/assets “wiggle” a bit. Most of the time, this isn’t noticeable, but it gets annoying if you slowly slide the cursor over the app’s icon. However, this isn’t an issue if you don’t use the Dock’s Magnification effect.
App icons on the macOS Dock are somewhat dynamic, showing, e.g., file transfer progress, but CharmBar makes them even better. If you’re the kind of person who likes to customize everything, maybe the app’s $5 price is worth it. If you’re just in it for the silliness, perhaps some not-that-useful menu bar apps may also interest you.