Icons for Mac App

This article also covers how to create .icns file which is used as icon for Mac Applications.


First,you need to create a folder with .iconset as suffix.
This folder will have following items with the dimensions mentioned and named as per screenshot.

• icon_16x16.png
• icon_16x16@2x.png
• icon_32x32.png
• icon_32x32@2x.png
• icon_128x128.png
• icon_128x128@2x.png
• icon_256x256.png
• icon_256x256@2x.png
• icon_512x512.png
• icon_512x512@2x.png

You go into the directory where you saved icon.iconset folder and then  run following command on Terminal to create icns file.

> iconutil -c icns icon.iconset/

This will give you a single file as output named icon.icns in the same parent directory as icon.iconset, Add this file to resources of your application. Now in your project, you need to update the Icon name in Info.plist like in screenshot here.

Note: Apple documents say that you can add icon.iconset folder itself to your app's resources and Xcode 4.4 automatically creates .icns file for you. It also notes that "Don’t use Icon Composer—it can’t create high-resolution icns files."  . HERE IS THE LINK