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How to Change a Folder's Color or Icon on a Mac

· 6 min read

Every folder on a Mac is the same blue folder, and in a window full of them, the one you want takes a moment to find. macOS Tahoe 26 finally lets the Finder change that, but the feature is easy to miss: the color comes from a tag, and the symbol or emoji hides in a shortcut menu.

The short answer: on macOS Tahoe 26 and later, Control-click a folder in the Finder and choose Customize Folder… to put a symbol or an emoji on it. Its color is the color of its tag: give it a red tag and it turns red. On any version of macOS, you can also paste a picture onto the folder's icon in the Get Info window. Folia Files offers any color, a symbol, an emoji or a picture in one sheet, and the Finder shows the result too.

Alex's home folder in Folia Files, in Icons view: Projects in orange with a star, Documents with a books emoji, Music in purple with a note, Movies in red, Pictures with a camera emoji, Desktop and Downloads left as they were

Color a folder with a tag (macOS Tahoe 26 and later)

Since macOS Tahoe 26, the Finder draws a tagged folder in the color of its tag. To color a folder, Control-click it and click one of the colored dots in its shortcut menu. The folder turns red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple or gray.

What to know before you color everything:

  • There are seven colors, the tag colors, and no color picker.
  • The last colored tag wins. A folder with several colored tags takes the color of the last one in its list of tags.
  • The color is a real tag. The folder now appears when you click that tag in the Finder's sidebar or search for it. That is useful if the color means something, and noise if you only wanted a color.
  • Every tagged folder changes color, including folders you tagged years ago for another reason. If folders changed color after you upgraded to macOS Tahoe, this is why. Removing the tag brings back the blue folder.

The Finder also reads an undocumented setting, AppleDisableTagBasedIconTinting, that turns tag colors off for folders. In Terminal: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleDisableTagBasedIconTinting -bool true, then killall Finder. To undo it: defaults delete com.apple.finder AppleDisableTagBasedIconTinting, then killall Finder again.

Put a symbol or an emoji on a folder: Customize Folder…

Control-click the folder in the Finder and choose Customize Folder…. In the popover, pick a symbol or an emoji for the front of the folder. The color you see there is, again, a tag: there is no separate color setting.

The limits:

  • macOS Tahoe 26 and later only. The choice is stored with the folder as a small piece of data (an extended attribute named com.apple.icon.folder#S), not as a picture, and earlier versions of macOS don't know it: there, the folder stays plain.
  • Symbols and emoji, not pictures. For an image of your own, use Get Info, below.
  • It replaces a custom icon. If the folder already has a picture as its icon, the Finder asks to remove it first, with Remove and Customize or Keep Current Icon, and warns that you can't undo it.

Use any picture as a folder icon (every version of macOS)

The classic method still works, on every version of macOS:

  1. Open the picture in Preview, then press ⌘A and ⌘C.
  2. Select the folder in the Finder and choose File › Get Info (⌘I).
  3. Click the small icon at the top left of the Info window, then press ⌘V.

To go back to the plain folder, click that small icon again and press ⌘X.

macOS keeps this kind of icon in a hidden file named “Icon” inside the folder, and every app that shows folder icons from macOS shows it. A picture can be any color and any design. The catch is that you have to make it, and make it readable at 16 points, the size of a list row.

Change a folder's color and icon in Folia Files

Folia Files brings the color, the symbol or emoji and the picture together in one sheet. Control-click a folder and choose Customize Folder…. It is also in the File menu, in the gear menu of each pane (Folder Settings › Folder Color and Icon…), and in the shortcut menu of a folder in the left sidebar.

The Customize Folder sheet in Folia Files, open on Projects: the orange folder with a star, large and at list sizes, the colors, the grid of symbols with its search field and categories, and the All Emoji…, Custom Image…, Reset and Apply buttons

  • Color: fourteen colors, and a color well for any other. The first swatch goes back to the system's blue.
  • Symbol or emoji: a grid of symbols and emoji, with a search field and categories. You can also type an emoji, a letter or a digit in the Emoji field, or click All Emoji… to pick one in the macOS character palette.
  • The preview shows the folder large and at list sizes, so you can see whether the symbol still reads in a list.
  • Custom Image… uses an image file instead.
  • Reset brings back the plain folder, whether it was customized here, in the Finder or with Get Info.

Click Apply. Folia Files draws each size of the icon for itself (at small sizes the symbol takes more room, so a 16-pixel folder isn't a blurry copy of a large one), then hands it to macOS as the folder's custom icon, just like a picture pasted in Get Info. The Finder and other apps show it, on every version of macOS that Folia Files runs on (macOS Sonoma 14 and later). The color can be any color, and no tag is added.

Two details:

  • If the folder was customized in the Finder, the sheet starts from its symbol or emoji and its color. Applying replaces the Finder's customization, which would otherwise hide the new icon.
  • Like any custom icon, it replaces the folder's own icon, so a colored tag no longer changes its color. To color the folder by tag again, click Reset.

In the left sidebar, Change Icon… on a favorite only changes the symbol of that row; the folder keeps its own icon.

What you set in the Finder shows in Folia Files

Folia Files draws folders the way the Finder does. A folder customized with Customize Folder… shows its symbol or emoji, and on macOS Tahoe 26 and later a tagged folder takes its tag's color, in the panes and in the left sidebar, even when the sidebar uses monochrome icons.

Folder colors and icons are part of Folia Files' customization options, with themes and Folder Background…, which puts a color, a gradient or an image behind a folder's files in Folia Files. Both are in the website and Mac App Store editions.

Which one to choose

  • A color you can also search by: a colored tag, on macOS Tahoe 26 and later.
  • A symbol or an emoji with Apple's tools only: Customize Folder… in the Finder, on macOS Tahoe 26 and later.
  • Any color, a symbol on an earlier macOS, or a picture: a custom icon, pasted in Get Info or made in Folia Files' Customize Folder… sheet.