The macosxhints Forums - Set File Icon on Command Line

Quote:

Originally Posted by biovizier (Post 372418)

You can use 'sips' to give an image file a custom icon of itself ('sips' acts on the original file so it might be safer to work on a copy):

Code:

/bin/cp imagefile.jpg donorfile.jpg

/usr/bin/sips -i donorfile.jpg

If you just wanted to give an image file a thumbnail custom icon of itself, you can stop there. Otherwise, if you have the "Developer" / "X Code" tools installed, you can use 'DeRez' and 'Rez' to manipulate the resources to copy the newly created 'icns' resource to a file:

Code:

/Developer/Tools/DeRez -only icns donorfile.jpg > tempicns.rsrc

Then copy the the temp file into the icns resource of the recipient file, and set the custom icon file attribute:

Code:

/Developer/Tools/Rez -append tempicns.rsrc -o recipientfile.xyz

/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a C recipientfile.xyz

Finally, restart the "Finder" to view the changes:

Code:

/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit' -e 'delay 2' -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate'

This is true, but it has one disadvantage - the icon is set with a low resolution only. So e.g. if you right click and choose quick look it will look pixelated even if the image you used had a high resolution. To battle this, I dug deeper and the following script sets a real .icns file and works for me:

Code:

#! /usr/bin/env python



from AppKit import *

import sys



NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace().setIcon_forFile_options_(NSImage.alloc().initByReferencingFile_(sys.argv[2]), sys.argv[1], 0)

usage would be:

Code:

setIcon recipientfile.xyz icon.icns