The appliance icon for my knowledge wrangling software program appears like this on a Mac as much as macOS 15.x:
Nevertheless, Apple has as soon as once more nuked all the pieces from orbit. Now it appears like this in macOS 26 Tahoe when the applying is inactive or in the event you select any Icon & widget type other than Default:
Thanks Apple. It’s such a pleasure to develop for Mac.
With some assist from a designer and hours of going round in circles, I’ve lastly managed to sort things to assist the brand new ‘liquid glass’ look. That is the way it ought to look within the subsequent launch, relying on the setting in Look>Icon & widget type:
I’m not satisfied it’s an enchancment when it comes to usability. However, a minimum of my app icon doesn’t seem like shit.
What it is advisable to know
The brand new macOS 26 icon format is .icon. It’s a folder full of assorted sources and is completely totally different to the outdated .icns format.
The .icon file will be created by Apple Icon Composer. I used a freelancer on Fiverr who did a superb job of changing my present vector art work and was very low cost. Notice that macOS conceal the extension of .icon folders by default, which was a supply of some confusion.
The .icon file then needs to be processed into an Property.automobile file utilizing actool. For instance:
xcrun actool utility.icon --compile ./icons/macosx --output-format human-readable-text --notices --warnings --errors --output-partial-info-plist temp.plist --app-icon Icon --include-all-app-icons --enable-on-demand-resources NO --development-region en --target-device mac --minimum-deployment-target 26.0 --platform macosxYou have to to alter the daring elements above, as applicable.
I needed to replace my Mac laptop computer to macOS 26, Xcode 26 and the macOS 26 SDK for the above to work.
You may examine the Property.automobile file utilizing assetutil to create a .json file itemizing the contents:
xcrun --sdk macosx assetutil --info ./icons/macosx/Property.automobile > ./icons/macosx/temp.json You have to to alter the daring elements above, as applicable.
Then it is advisable to reference the brand new icon in your present utility .plist file. For instance, add on the similar stage as CFBundleGetInfoString:
CFBundleIconName
utility You have to to alter the daring half above, as applicable. I imagine the string worth if based mostly on the file stem of the unique .icon file. However I’m not 100% certain about that. Take a look at the .json file produced by assetutil for clues. Mine contained this:
The temp.plist file generated by actool is seemingly supposed to offer you a .plist file that refers back to the icon useful resource. It didn’t and was fully ineffective.
Then place each Property.automobile and your outdated .icns file within the Useful resource folder of your utility (earlier than you signal it). That approach it ought to look okay on each macOS 26 and earlier OSes.
Should you develop utilizing XCode, it can most likely do among the above for you. I develop in C++/Qt utilizing Qt Creator, so I needed to do all of it manually.
I used to be capable of generate the Property.automobile on macOS 26 after which incorporate it into the construct on my macOS 12 growth machine.
I hope the above saves somebody a number of hours. Now I must repeat the method for PerfectTablePlan.
You may also discover this submit helpful (the place I received among the data):
https://www.hendrik-erz.de/submit/supporting-liquid-glass-icons-in-apps-without-xcode
