Desktop Icons For Mac Os

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Artua: Free Mac Icons – the QuickTime X icons here are simply beautiful. The Mac OS Finder icon at the top of this article is from this set, highly recommended. WeLoveIcons – as the name suggests, they love icons and it shows. Tons and tons of hand selected and beautiful icons, some are individual others are sets, covering a wide range of themes. And you can also hide or remove icons from Mac Os X desktop from the above-mentioned methods. You need to follow each step carefully and enter the correct command. Share: Previous. Best iPhone File Manager Apps. Get Apple News App on macOS Mojave Outside USA, UK and Australia.

Luna gives you the flexibility to work wherever you want, however you want. Whether it’s extending your Mac or iPad into a second display, or making your iPad the main display for your Mac mini, the choice is yours. Create your ultimate setup with Luna Display. One way to use an iPad as a display for a headless Mac It involves screen sharing and a third-party VNC app. You could use the iPad as the “monitor,” while typing on the Mac mini keyboard. Ipad as monitor for mac mini. I've got the Duet display app running and it works flawlessly when a hdmi monitor is attached to the mac mini and the ipad is displaying a second screen 'mirror display'. However, when i try and use the ipad on its own as a primary monitor (unplugging the hdmi monitor attached to the mac mini) it becomes glitchy.

App Icon

Beautiful app icons are an important part of the user experience on all Apple platforms. A unique, memorable icon evokes your app and can help people recognize it at a glance on the desktop, in Finder, and in the Dock. Polished, expressive icons can also hint at an app’s personality and even its overall level of quality.

In macOS 11, app icons share a common set of visual attributes, including the rounded-rectangle shape, front-facing perspective, level position, and uniform drop shadow. Rooted in the macOS 11 design language, these attributes showcase the lifelike rendering style people expect in macOS while presenting a harmonious user experience. To download templates that specify the correct shape and drop shadow, see Apple Design Resources.

IMPORTANT When you update your app for macOS 11, use your new app icon design to replace the icon you designed for earlier versions. You can’t include two different app icons for one app, and the macOS 11 app icon style looks fine on a Mac running Catalina or earlier.

Design a beautiful icon that clearly represents your app. Combine an engaging design with an artistic interpretation of your app’s purpose that people can instantly understand.

Embrace simplicity. Find a concept or element that captures the essence of your app and express it in a simple, unique way, adding details only when doing so enhances meaning. Too many details can be hard to discern and can make the icon appear muddy, especially at smaller sizes.

Establish a single focus point. A single, centered point of interest captures the user’s attention and helps them recognize your app at a glance. Presenting multiple focus points can obscure the icon’s message.

To give people a familiar and consistent experience, prefer a design that works well across multiple platforms. If your app runs on other platforms, use a similar image for all app icons while rendering them in the style that’s appropriate for each platform. For example, in iOS and watchOS, the Mail app icon depicts the white envelope in a streamlined, graphical style; in macOS 11, the envelope includes depth and detail that communicate a realistic weight and texture.

macOS 11

Consider depicting a familiar tool to communicate what people use your app to do. To give context to your app’s purpose, you can use the icon background to portray the tool’s environment or the items it affects. For example, the TextEdit icon pairs a mechanical pencil with a sheet of lined paper to suggest a utilitarian writing experience. After you create a detailed, realistic image of a tool, it often works well to let it float just above the background and extend slightly past the icon boundaries. If you do this, make sure the tool remains visually unified with the background and doesn’t overwhelm the rounded-rectangle shape.

Make real objects look real. If you depict real objects in your app icon, make them look like they’re made of physical materials and have actual mass. Replicate the characteristics of substances like fabric, glass, paper, and metal to convey an object’s weight and feel. For example, the Xcode app icon features a hammer that looks like it has a steel head and polymer grip.

If text is essential for communicating your app’s purpose, consider creating a graphic abstraction of it. Actual text in an icon can be difficult to read and doesn’t support accessibility or localization. To give the impression of text without implying that people should zoom in to read it, you can create a graphic texture that suggests it.

Desktop Icons For Mac Os

To depict photos or parts of your app’s UI, create idealized images that emphasize the features you want people to notice. Photos are often full of details that obscure the main content when viewed at small sizes. If you want to use a photo in your icon, pick one with strongly contrasting values that make the main subject stand out. Remove unimportant details that make primary lines and shapes fuzzy or indistinct. If your app has a UI that people recognize, avoid simply replicating standard UI elements or using a screenshot in your icon. Instead, consider designing a graphic that echoes the UI and expresses the personality of your app.

Don’t use replicas of Apple hardware products. Apple products are copyrighted and can’t be reproduced in your icons or images. Avoid displaying replicas of devices, because hardware designs tend to change frequently and can make your icon look dated.

Use the drop shadow in the icon-design template. The template includes the system-defined drop shadow that helps your app icon coordinate with other macOS 11 icons.

Consider using interior shadows and highlights to add definition and realism. For example, the Mail app icon uses both shadows and highlights to give the envelope authenticity and to suggest that the flap is slightly open. In icons that include a tool that floats above a background — such as TextEdit or Xcode — interior shadows can strengthen the perception of depth and make the tool look real. Shadows and highlights should suggest a light source that faces the icon, positioned just above center and tilted slightly downward.

Avoid defining contours that suggest a shape other than a rounded rectangle. In rare cases, you might want to fine-tune the basic app icon shape, but doing so risks creating an icon that looks like it doesn’t belong in macOS 11. If you must alter the shape, prefer subtle adjustments that continue to express a rounded rectangle silhouette.

Consider adding a slight glow just inside the edges of your icon. If your app icon includes a dark reflective surface, like glass or metal, add an inner glow to make the icon stand out and prevent it from appearing to dissolve into dark backgrounds.

Keep primary content within the icon grid bounding box; keep all content within the outer bounding box. If an icon’s primary content extends beyond the icon grid bounding box, it tends to look out of place. If you overlay a tool on your icon, it works well to align the tool’s top edge with the outer bounding box and its bottom edge with the inner bounding box, as shown below.

In addition to the bounding boxes and suggested tool placement, the icon design template provides a grid to help you position items within an icon. You can also use the icon grid to ensure that centered inner elements like circles use a size that’s consistent with other icons in the system.

App Icon Attributes

All app icons should use the following specifications.

AttributeValue
FormatPNG
Color spaceDisplay P3 (wide-gamut color), sRGB (color), or Gray Gamma 2.2 (grayscale)
LayersFlattened with transparency as appropriate
Resolution@1x and @2x (see Image Size and Resolution)
ShapeSquare with no rounded corners

Don’t provide app icons in ICNS or JPEG format. The ICNS format doesn’t support features like wide color gamut or deliver the performance and efficiency you get when you use asset catalogs. JPEG doesn’t support transparency through alpha channels, and its compression can blur or distort an icon’s images. For best results, add deinterlaced PNG files to the app icon fields of your Xcode project’s asset catalog.

App Icon Sizes

Your app icon is displayed in many places, including in Finder, the Dock, Launchpad, and the App Store. To ensure that your app icon looks great everywhere people see it, provide it in the following sizes:

  • 512x512 pt (512x512 px @1x, 1024x1024 px @2x)
  • 256x256 pt (256x256 px @1x, 512x512 px @2x)
  • 128x128 pt (128x128 px @1x, 256x256 px @2x)
  • 32x32 pt (32x32 px @1x, 64x64 px @2x)
  • 16x16 pt (16x16 px @1x, 32x32 px @2x)

Maintain visual consistency in all icon sizes. As icon size decreases, fine details become muddy and hard to distinguish. At the smallest sizes, it’s important to remove unnecessary features and exaggerate primary features to help the content remain clear. As you simplify icons that are visually smaller, don’t let them appear drastically different from their larger counterparts. Strive to make subtle variations that ensure the icon remains visually consistent when displayed in different environments. For example, if people drag your icon between displays with different resolutions, the icon’s appearance shouldn’t suddenly change.

The 512x512 pt Safari app icon (on the left) uses a circle of tick marks to indicate degrees; the 16x16 pt version of the icon (on the right) doesn’t include this detail.

The Mac Desktop is your virtual workspace in Apple's OS X. It's the starting point for all the work (and play) you do on your Mac, and the screen over which everything floats.

That can be a little confusing, because most people associate the word “desktop” with the computer you keep on your desk — as opposed to a portable one you might use on your lap, like a “laptop.”

But, I'm going to explain the basic characteristics of the Mac Desktop as you would use it in OS X.

So, what is the Mac Desktop? Let's start with why it would be called something so ambiguous…

Why is it Called the “Desktop”?

When Apple introduced the Mac to the world, personal computers were still new and foreign. In order to make it more familiar, Apple designed their operating system (OS) to be a metaphor for working at a desk in an office.

Because of that, you'll hear other office terms to describe your Mac experience. Words like “files” and “documents” to refer to the things you keep on your Mac (such as pictures, videos, letters, email and so forth). And “folders” to talk about how you organize those files.

“Desktop” is just another one of those terms.

At your office desk, you do your work on top of it — on the desktop. You keep tools such as your pens, calendar, stapler on top of it. You might take out a pad of paper and write a letter on top of the desk. If you need to read a book or document, you'll take it out and put it on your desk to start reading. Or, maybe you'll keep a pile of papers on your desktop so that you won't forget to review them that day.

The Mac Desktop is similar. It's the “clear slate” upon which you do your work.

When you start a program to type a letter, you'll see it as a little “window” on your desktop. If you have a few “documents” to read, they can be represented by a few “icons” that sit on your desktop.

Disorganized or busy people such as myself will likely have a cluttered desktop, with a lot of things sitting on it. In that case, you might not actually be able to see the desktop. For example…

Images: Clean Desktop. Cluttered Desktop.

Characteristics of the Mac Desktop

There are particular features of the Mac Desktop that distinguish it from other computer workspaces, such as Microsoft Windows.

The Dock

Desktop Icons For Mac Os

Sticking with the office desk metaphor, the Dock is a lot like the top drawer of your desk, where you would keep all your most commonly used office tools for easy access, such as writing utensils, a calculator, or your calendar or an address book.

On a Mac, those tools would be in the form of computer programs called “applications” (or “apps” for short). These apps are represented by little icons, which can be “docked” like little boats to the bottom of your screen. (That's why this strip of icons is called “The Dock”.)

It's a lot like tucking your stapler and calculator into your top drawer for quick-access and convenience.

The Menu Bar

Net paint for mac os. The Menu Bar is a strip of words and icons across the top of the screen.

Mac

Clicking on each of these will reveal a different menu of specific commands that allow you to control your Mac and tell it what you want it to do. These menus will change depending on what program or “application” you are using at the moment.

Show desktop icons mac os x

Windows

Windows are little rectangular “views” into the different things you can do with your Mac. They hover over the Desktop, and you can have many of these Windows open at once — giving you many different views at the same time.

Free Desktop Icons For Mac Os X

One Window might let you look at websites the Internet. Another will let you read, write, or edit a message or a document. Yet another gives you a peek into all the files you have stored on your Mac.

Free Desktop Icons For Mac

Each Window belongs to a different application, and has a different function.

Icons

I've already mentioned them a few times, but Icons are little images that represent various things on your Mac — those files, folders, documents, and apps. They are designed to make it easy to identify what they represent.

The icon for a document of words or text will look like a little letter. The icon for a folder (in which you store a collection of documents) will look like a manilla folder.

Icons make it easy to quickly understand what you have stored on your computer at a glance, without having to read too much.

Customization

At the office, you might want to personalize your workspace with a photograph of your family, or maybe some posters or stuffed animals.

Show Desktop Icons Mac

You can do the same with the Desktop. If you don't like the image of outer space that Apple makes as your default, you can change it to an picture of an animal, a family portrait, photograph of a peaceful waterfall, your team logo, or whatever picture you like.

Desktop Icon Size Mac Os

Everyone's Desktop will look a little bit different.

Display Icons On Mac Desktop

I hope this properly answers the question, “What is the Apple Desktop?” for you. If you have more questions that aren't answered here, or if you can clarify or add to these explanations for other newbies, please leave a comment below. I look forward to reading your feedback.





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