How to Give Every App Icon on Your Dock a Matching Style

Why a Dock ends up looking mismatched

Every app ships its own icon, drawn by a different designer in a different year. Put 15 of them in a row and you get a mix of squircles, odd shapes, flat colors and gradients that never quite match.

macOS 26 has a system-wide fix. You'll find it in System Settings → Appearance → Icon & Widget Style, with four choices: Default, Dark, Clear and Tinted (Dock Groups). It changes Dock icons and desktop widgets together. Tinted draws icons in monochrome, using a color you pick from a popup menu below the setting (The Eclectic Light Company). One reader noted that before 26.1 that popup offered only 8 preset colors (Eclectic Light comments). How good the result looks also depends on the app. Tahoe builds the dark, clear and tinted versions from the new .icon format, so apps that haven't adopted it get a rougher treatment (Dock Groups).

To go further than that, you'd replace icons one at a time. Select the app in Finder, press Command-I and drag a new image onto the small icon in the top-left corner of the Info window (adamshack/macos-icons). That gets slow with 20 apps. Built-in apps are another catch: in a 2023 Apple Community thread from the macOS Sonoma era, users reported that Apple's apps and Mac App Store apps went back to their bundled icon whenever they updated (Apple Community). That report predates macOS 26, so behavior on your Mac may differ.

Moor draws every icon in its docks itself, which gives you two quicker routes: one style for everything, or a whole icon pack in one import. Both change only Moor's docks. No app is modified, so you'll want a profile set to Moor only or Both so you can actually see Moor's docks.

Route 1: restyle every app at once

This is the 10-second route. Pick a style and every app icon in your Moor docks follows it.

1. Open Moor's Settings → Icons. Or press Control-Option-E to edit your docks and open the Theme menu → App Icons.
2. Choose Glyphs, Tinted or Monochrome.
3. If you picked Tinted, choose the color under the style picker. Use one of the swatches, or pick any color.
4. If you were in edit mode, press Done (or Control-Option-E again).

Glyphs gives you the most uniform result, because every icon becomes the same tile shape. Tinted and Monochrome keep each app's artwork recognizable and change only the color.

Route 2: import a whole icon pack

If you'd rather have hand-drawn replacement icons than a generated style, use an icon pack. In Moor, an icon pack is just a folder of pictures named after apps, like Safari.png or Slack.icns, or after their bundle IDs, like com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap.png.

Where to get one

Icon sites and designers sell or share replacement icons for Mac apps. For example, Krijn Rijshouwer's Custom macOS Icon Pack has 46 icons for $16.99, and the dark Onyx pack has 58 icons in PNG, ICO and ICNS from $7.99. Download the icons into one folder.

Importing it

1. Put all the pictures in a single folder. Square pictures look best.
2. Open Moor's Settings → Icons.
3. Choose Import Icon Pack… and select the folder.
4. Moor matches each picture to your apps and tells you how many it matched.

You don't need to rename files first. Moor ignores the extra words icon sites tend to add, so "Slack-macOS-BigSur-dark.png" still matches Slack.

Fixing a single app

For one app the pack missed, or one you want to change:

1. Right-click the app in a Moor dock.
2. Choose Options → Change Icon….
3. Pick a PNG, JPEG or .icns file.

To undo it, right-click → Options → Reset Icon, or use Reset in Settings → Icons. Reset All removes every custom icon at once.

Which route should you pick?

Want it to look tidy in 30 seconds? Pick a style. Have a pack you love, or want a specific look? Import it. You can also use both, which is the next tip.

Tips and tricks

• Set a style first, then import the pack. A custom icon overrides the style, so apps the pack covers get its artwork and everything else falls back to Glyphs, Tinted or Monochrome. Nothing ends up looking out of place.
• Match the dock to the icons. Styles change apps only. Folders, files, widgets and the Trash keep their own look, and you change those with themes. Monochrome icons sit nicely on the Paper or Terminal theme. With Tinted, try a custom theme with Tint from wallpaper so the glass and the icons share colors.
• Same icons on every screen. A custom icon shows in every Moor dock, so a side dock or a dock on a second display matches the main one. See how to put a dock on every monitor.
• Back up your icons. Custom icons are saved in ~/Library/Application Support/Moor/icons. Copy that folder before you rebuild a Mac.
• Pack matched fewer apps than expected? Rename the leftover files to the app's exact name or its bundle ID and import again. Or set those apps by hand with Change Icon….

Next steps

Open Settings → Icons and try each style for a minute, since you can switch back any time. Then grab a few icons you like, put them in one folder and import it over your favorite style. For the full list of dock options, see Docks.

Moor has a free 14-day trial at moorapp.com.