IconCraft

You switched apps. Keep the faces you know.
Cancelled the expensive subscription and moved to an AI-built, vibe-coded or indie alternative? Keep the name and icon you already know — or give any app, Apple’s included, a name and icon entirely your own. The app underneath doesn’t change at all; it just looks and feels like home. Safely, reversibly, in one window.

🌐 Website: iconcraft.co · Signed with Developer ID & notarised by Apple — double-click and it opens.

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What is IconCraft?

You did the maths, cancelled the big subscription, and replaced it with something AI-built, vibe-coded or indie — a Photoshop-style editor, a CAD tool, a design app. Great move. Except now it sits in your Dock with a generic icon and a name you never chose, and your muscle memory keeps missing it.

IconCraft puts the familiar face back, system-wide, from one window:

• 🎭 Keep the face you know — your replacement app, wearing the original app’s genuine name and icon (found from verified sources — see how the search works). PdfCraft becomes Adobe Acrobat again; the list always shows the original app underneath, so nothing is pretending to be something it isn’t.
• 🎨 …or make it entirely yours — give any app, Apple’s included, any other app’s icon, your own PNG/ICNS artwork, and a new name.
• 🧩 The app underneath never changes — same code, same files, same behaviour. IconCraft only changes how it looks and what it’s called.
• ↩️ Change your mind any time — every change is backed up before it’s made; one click per app (or Restore all) puts the exact original back.
• 🖥️ Every app, one list — all 100+ installed apps with their real icons, searchable (⌘K), with bulk select / Replace selected.
• 🗂️ What opens what, in one place — which app opens your links, PDFs, photos and files, in a single list instead of a dozen buried panels.

No accounts, no telemetry, no diagnostics maze. One screen: your apps → the look you know (or the look you choose).

✨ Features

Genuine artwork only	Icons come from the publisher's own site/CDN, their verified App Store listing, a saved original, or the real installed app itself — never redrawn, never scraped from icon-aggregator sites.
Exhaustive search	Six layers of sources run in parallel before "Not found" is ever shown — with a plain-English report of what was checked (e.g. "publisher site blocked (403); not on the App Store; not installed").
Clone-friendly	Built for ArtCraft-style and vibe-coded alternatives (ai.storyteller.* and friends) with verified product equivalents — Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects, InDesign, Figma, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pro Tools, AutoCAD…
Safe by design	Original metadata is backed up before mutation, bundle identity + code signature verified, rollback on any failure, restore refuses to overwrite apps changed behind its back.
Menu bar control	IconCraft's menu bar icon toggles the background keeper, opens Setup & Permissions, jumps to App Management settings, and opens the app — while skins themselves live on disk and need no process at all. If anything removes the keeper agent, IconCraft restores it.
Basic settings	Launch at login, start-in-menu-bar-only, Dock icon and menu bar icon visibility (live, with a guarantee at least one way back in always stays on), optional notifications for keeper repairs and skins needing attention, a GitHub update check (it never self-updates), and maintenance actions (icon-cache refresh, data folder, re-run setup).
Default apps tab	"Which app opens this?" — answered in one list instead of a dozen buried panels. See today's default for links, email, PDFs, images, video, audio, text, code, HTML, ZIPs and calendars, switch it in one click, and it applies everywhere (via LaunchServices, the same service Finder uses).
Your list, your order	Sort the app list A–Z, Z–A or customised-first, and group by status (customised / original ready / none found) or by folder. Your choice is remembered between launches.
Setup & Permissions	First launch shows live Ready / Granted — tested / Blocked / Not checked statuses. App Management is proven with the same harmless bundle-writability test used before a real change — never by pretending that opening Settings is a grant. Full Disk Access, Accessibility and Screen Recording are explicitly not requested.
Native icon scale	Full-bleed publisher/App Store artwork is placed on the standard macOS icon grid (an 824px body centred in the 1024px canvas) when a Finder or full skin is applied, so skinned apps sit at the same visual size as native icons in Finder, the Dock and Launchpad. Artwork that already has proper macOS padding is never shrunk twice, and existing skins are refitted in place by the keeper.
Originals Vault	Before anything changes, your app's original name (folder + internal) and icon are saved under its stable bundle ID. Restore rebuilds from the vault — even after the app updates, moves, or is renamed again.
Full skin (running identity)	Optionally write the name + icon inside a cloned/third-party app (re-signed, fully backed up and reversible) so it keeps your identity in the Dock/menu bar while running. Apps that set their own Dock icon at launch from artwork embedded in the executable (e.g. Rust/eframe clones) get that embedded copy swapped in place too — same byte length, originals backed up — and IconCraft says so plainly when an app's running icon can't be replaced safely. Bundle ID and links never change.
Skins that stick	Third-party apps/updaters love reverting Finder icons and names on launch. Turn on Keep skins applied and a tiny background agent re-applies yours automatically — nothing inside any app is ever edited.
Edit in one panel	The pencil opens a single editor: name, icon choice, an optional full skin, a live before/after preview, one Save changes that performs the steps in the right order (and says exactly which step failed if one does), and Restore original. Renames happen in Finder (the outer .app, exactly like Finder does); running, protected, or colliding apps are refused.
Fast	Cached inventory paints instantly; scans, thumbnails and original-icon checks continue in the background. Content-addressed previews, single-flight native calls.
Native & private	Go backend on an authenticated loopback port + a native AppKit/WebKit window. Nothing leaves your Mac except publisher icon lookups. No analytics. Ever.
Looks the part	Modern dark-first UI with System / Light / Dark, following your Mac live.
Speaks your language	English, 简体中文, 日本語 and 한국어, chosen from your macOS language preferences — the window, menu bar item, permissions screen, notifications and error messages included.

📦 Install

Requires macOS 12.3+ (Apple Silicon or Intel). No developer account, Xcode, Homebrew or VM needed.

Option A — disk image (recommended): download IconCraft-Mac-0.14.0.dmg, open it, and drag IconCraft into Applications. The DMG and the app inside it are both signed and notarised, so macOS opens them without a Gatekeeper approval detour.

Option B — ZIP: download IconCraft-Mac-0.14.0.zip from the latest release, extract it, and drag IconCraft.app into Applications yourself.

Then open IconCraft and complete Finish setup:

1. Choose Run checks.
2. If App Management is blocked, use the supplied button to open System Settings, switch IconCraft on, return, and choose Check again. A green Granted — tested result means IconCraft proved the needed write access on one installed app.
3. Choose whether the optional background helper stays on.
4. Choose Finish setup. You can reopen this screen at any time from Setup & permissions or the menu bar icon — and you should recheck after an IconCraft update, because macOS may treat a newly signed local copy as new.

Release builds are signed with a Developer ID and notarised by Apple (hardened runtime, ticket stapled), so downloads open with a double-click. The DMG is signed and notarised too. Verify any time with spctl --assess --type execute /Applications/IconCraft.app — it should report accepted, source=Notarized Developer ID. No Open Anyway step should ever be needed for a release download.

🚀 Usage

1. Pick an app from the list (search with ⌘K).
2. If a genuine original was found, hit Replace — or select many and Replace selected.
3. Want a different look? Click the grid icon to borrow any installed app's icon, or Choose image file… for your own PNG/ICNS.
4. Click the pencil to edit the app in one panel: type a new name, pick the icon, optionally switch on the full skin (name and icon inside the app, for the Dock and menu bar while it runs), preview the result and Save changes — or Restore original from the same panel.
5. Changed your mind? Restore (per app) or Restore all puts back the exact original icon and name.

🔎 How the original-icon search works

"Not found" should mean we actually looked everywhere. For each mapped product, these run in parallel:

1. Publisher product pages (US + regional + help/download pages), including icon URLs embedded in page JSON on JavaScript-heavy sites.
2. Publisher CDN icon paths (e.g. Adobe's product-icon CDN).
3. Verified App Store listing by exact track ID (US + AU regions).
4. Verified App Store search — seller must be the publisher, the track name must equal the product, and the bundle ID must be known: knockoffs like "CAD Plus" are rejected.
5. Saved original from a previous successful check (works offline).
6. The genuine installed app itself — exact bundle ID, year-suffixed variants (AutoCAD2025.app), or exact product name.

Only genuine artwork is ever applied. Vendor artwork remains its owners' property; IconCraft's code is MIT (see License).

🛡️ Safety model

• Backup-before-write journal for every change; verify-after-write; automatic rollback on failure; "rollback-required" state is surfaced, never hidden.
• Code signatures verified before and after a change using checks that understand Finder custom icons (a strict codesign check would reject the very icon data being set — ask us how we know).
• Symlinked bundles, protected system paths, invalid/active-SVG artwork, oversized responses and non-publisher URL redirects are all rejected.
• Only apps you select are modified. No global icon-cache purges, no binary patching, no security-setting changes.

🏗️ Building from source

bash build-current.sh        # fmt, JS checks, go test (+race, vet), universal build
python3 scripts/build_macos.py
./build/IconCraft.app/Contents/MacOS/IconCraft --self-test   # 27 native checks, disposable fixtures only
python3 scripts/package_v05.py                               # release ZIPs into build/packages/

Stack: Go (standard library only) backend · authenticated loopback HTTP service · native AppKit/WebKit window via embedded JXA · vanilla HTML/CSS/JavaScript UI. Tests: Go unit/race suites, Node bridge/UI contract tests, and macOS-native fixture tests run via --self-test.

Repo layout

cmd/iconcraft/     entry point, launch-failure reporting
internal/core/     app discovery, journalled apply/restore, rename, cache
internal/originals/ verified publisher/App Store icon resolver
internal/native/   AppKit/WebKit bridge (JXA) + native diagnostics
internal/server/   loopback HTTP API, thumbnails, embedded UI
assets/            logo.svg (source) · icon.icns · logo-1024.png
scripts/           build, packaging, installer, logo generator
docs/              changelogs, acceptance + validation evidence

🗺️ Roadmap

• Developer ID signing + notarisation (needs a paid Apple Developer account — support the project to help make it happen)
• More verified product mappings (open an issue with evidence)
• Dock/Finder refresh hints after applying icons
• Localisation

🤝 Contributing

PRs and verified mapping data are very welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and our Code of Conduct. Please don't submit third-party artwork; mappings must distinguish verified equivalents from suggestions. Found a bug? Use the issue templates.

❤️ Support IconCraft

IconCraft is free and open source. If it brought your icons back, please consider supporting its development — every contribution keeps it free for everyone (and funds the Apple Developer account for signed, notarised releases):

The same contribution bar lives at the bottom of the app window. v0.14.0 · by Gavin Shipman · MIT

📄 License

MIT — Copyright © 2026 Gavin Shipman and IconCraft contributors. Independent of ArtCraft, Adobe, Microsoft, Figma, Avid and Autodesk. Genuine vendor artwork fetched by the app is not relicensed by this repository and remains subject to its owners' terms.