How to Fix Gray 'Icon Jail' App Icons in macOS Tahoe's Dock

Why your icons ended up in gray boxes

macOS 26 Tahoe requires app icons to be squircles, a shape Apple has recommended since Big Sur. Any icon that doesn't fit is placed inside a gray squircle. 9to5Mac's verdict: the gray box makes the actual icon 20% smaller and 80% harder to recognize.

The problem isn't limited to the first release. An Apple Support Communities thread reports third-party icons in gray boxes after updating to Tahoe 26 and says the problem can be reproduced on 26.1.

Apps sold outside the Mac App Store can escape squircle jail with the NSDockTilePlugIn API, though that isn't what the API was designed for and the Mac App Store doesn't allow it. If your apps haven't done that, you need a workaround.

What macOS gives you, and where it stops

Icon & Widget Style

Open System Settings → Appearance and find Icon & widget style. It has four choices: Default, Dark, Clear and Tinted. Dark puts black backgrounds on icons across the system, System Settings' sidebar included, in both Light and Dark mode. Tinted renders icons in monochrome in a color you choose. Once Tinted is on, the Folder color setting becomes "Icon, widget & folder color".

Each choice applies to every icon on the system. You can't pick a style for one app, and you can't supply your own picture.

Per-app fixes

You can free one app at a time. Simon B. Støvring reports that when you assign an icon manually through Finder's Get Info, macOS respects its shape and doesn't force the glass background, and that this works even if you replace the icon with the same one. His post is the place to read the details of that method.

9to5Mac points out that manual replacement doesn't appear to support Apple's clear icon mode or dynamic light and dark adjustments. It adds that addressing that would require Apple's free Icon Composer app, a route better suited to designers. Some tools take on part of the per-app work:

A word on scripts: a bash script you download can do anything your user account can do. Before running one, read what it does, check the repository for recent activity and open issues, and have a current backup. If you aren't comfortable reading shell code, the Get Info method or an approach that leaves apps alone is the safer choice.

Restyle every icon in a Moor dock at once

Moor is a Dock replacement for macOS 26 and later on Apple silicon. It draws every icon in its docks itself, so it can restyle all of them together without touching any app. The apps, Finder and Apple's Dock keep their own icons, and nothing on your Mac is modified.

1. Open Moor's Settings → Icons.
2. Pick one of the four styles: - Original: each app's own icon. Choose this to go back to how the apps look on their own. - Glyphs: a matched set of colored tiles, with clean symbols for well-known apps and a letter for the rest. - Tinted: every icon in one color you choose. - Monochrome: every icon in black and white.
3. For Tinted, choose the color under the style picker. Use one of the swatches or any color you like.

Prefer to work on the dock itself? Press Control-Option-E to edit your docks, open the Theme menu in the toolbar and choose App Icons, pick a style, then press Done (or Control-Option-E again) to leave edit mode.

Glyphs, Tinted and Monochrome cover every app in every Moor dock in one step, so a few gray-boxed apps no longer stand out from the rest. The App icons documentation has the full reference, and for building a matching set, see how to give every app icon a matching style.

Give one app its own picture

Sometimes you only want to rescue the two or three apps that look worst.

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

The new icon appears in every Moor dock and takes priority over the style you picked. To undo it, right-click the app and choose Options → Reset Icon, or use Reset in Settings → Icons. The app's right-click menu is covered in Docks.

To get replacement icons, 9to5Mac recommends macOSicons.com, which has a large library of community-made icons in the new squircle shape.

Replace many at once with an icon pack

Put the icons you want in one folder, named after each app (Safari.png, Slack.icns) or its bundle ID. In Settings → Icons, choose Import Icon Pack… and pick the folder. Moor matches each file to an app, ignoring the extra words icon sites often add to file names (so "Slack-macOS-BigSur-dark.png" still matches Slack), and tells you how many it matched. The full walkthrough is in how to give your whole Dock a new icon pack in one step.

Tips, trade-offs and troubleshooting

• Mix styles with custom icons. Pick Monochrome for a quiet dock, then give one or two apps you look for constantly a colored custom icon. Custom icons always win over the style.
• Keep Original and fix only the worst. If most of your icons look fine, leave the style on Original and give the gray-boxed apps custom icons or an icon pack.
• Apple and App Store apps are fine. Third-party tools can't change icons of apps that came with macOS or from the App Store. Moor writes nothing to the app, so this limit doesn't apply in its docks.
• Folders, files, widgets and the Trash keep their own look. Icon styles apply to apps only. To change the rest, use a theme. A dark theme like Midnight goes well with Monochrome icons. More in changing your Dock's look.
• Start over in one click. Reset All in Settings → Icons removes every custom icon, and switching the style back to Original drops the restyle. Moor saves custom icons in ~/Library/Application Support/Moor/icons.
• Know what stays the same. Finder, Apple's Dock and the apps' own icons don't change. If you quit Moor, Apple's Dock comes back with Tahoe's icons. To change icons everywhere on the system, you still need the Get Info route or a tool like those in the table.

Next steps

Open Settings → Icons, try Glyphs and Tinted against your wallpaper (Original is always there to go back), then replace the icons that still bother you, one by one or as a pack. While you're there, look at Docks to put your restyled dock on any edge of any display.

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