From time to time I like to make certain folders on my macOS desktop stand out. For example, I use automation to move screenshots saved to my desktop directly to a special Screenshots folder. Since I’m always looking for the screenshots that I take, I decided to tint the folder purple to make it stand out amongst the other items on my desktop. Here’s how you can go about easily doing the same.
Step 1: Create a new folder.
Step 2: Right click on the folder and select Get Info.
If you’ve run the ls command in Bash, you’ll notice that the directories and files you see are colorized according to their type. You can customize your own color scheme to choose different text colors, background colors, and formatting like bold and underline. Try this: ls -F -color=auto The color switch gets you color; the -F makes ls append a character to each file name to distinguish directories, links, and sockets from files. If that works for you, you can make it an alias for future use, by putt.
Step 3: Select the image next to the name of the folder and select Edit → Copy.
Step 4: Open Preview and select File → New from Clipboard.
Step 5: In Preview, Click the Markup Tool Bar button followed by the Adjust Color button.
Step 6: Use the sliders to adjust the color of the folder to your liking. If you wish to have more control over the color, you can use an app like Pixelmator or Affinity Photo.
Step 7: Once your changes are complete select Edit → Select All.
Step 8: Select Edit → Copy.
Step 9: Go back to the Info tab mentioned in Step 2 and select the image of the folder.
Step 10: Select Edit → Paste to paste the colored folder, which should alter the look of that single folder.
Conclusion
It’s easy to change folder color on a case by case basis using this handy how-to. It’s a great way to make significant folders stand out on a cluttered desktop. What method do you use to modify macOS folder color? Sound off in the comments below.
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Jennifer (jyncroft) is right. or for the adventurous, compile the Gnu fileutils 4-1. It is easy, and will give you some experience compiling (with the Dev tools installed and with the idea that you might want to discover what the package installs and then backup all your old utils first).
All of the comments on this add up to the fact that:
'THIS IS NOT A GOOD HINT!'
'THIS IS NOT A GOOD HINT!'
As far as I know.. the version of ls which ships with Mac OS X does not support the 'color=auto' command which you need to invoke when you are using ls. The version in the GNU tools ( search for fileutil in google ) Apple remote desktop v3.2 for mac windows 10. includes that capability. This information has been provided in some hints previously on this web-site.
Fileutils also includes a small script that you can use to automatically set your environment variable it is called DIRCOLORS and you can make it executable and then setenv LS_COLORS 'path/to/DIRCOLORS'
this is desirable because a nice set of color choices may end up being a very long list.
here is a sample from my environment.mine (there is a hint about that too!!!) where I am not using the DIRCOLORS but obtained some of the information from there and then wrote the infor in multiple lines as follows:
each setenv LS_COLORS 'XXXX:XXXX' should be on one line!!!here is a sample from my environment.mine (there is a hint about that too!!!) where I am not using the DIRCOLORS but obtained some of the information from there and then wrote the infor in multiple lines as follows:
setenv LS_COLORS 'no=00:fi=00:di=09;33:ln=04;34:pi=04;33:*.dylib=04;03;31'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:so=01;35:bd=03;32;03:cd=03;34;02:or=30;01;31'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:ex=03;36:*.tar=04;03;32:*.tgz=04;03;32'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:*.arj=01;31:*.taz=01;31:*.lzh=01;30'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:*.zip=35;01;30:*.z=01;31:*.Z=01;30:*.gz=04;03;32'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:*.d*=01;30:*.jpg=01;35:*.gif=04;32'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:*.pl=06;31:*.ppm=01;35:*.tga=01;35'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;35:*.ti*=01;34'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:*.txt=09;33:*.pdf=02;36:*.gl=03;37:*.dl=01;37'
setenv LS_COLORS '${LS_COLORS}:*.mine=03;36:*.html=02;34:*.cgi,*.?html=03;34'
If you just want to get away from the default blue for directories try to find the correct way for your shell in the other comments in this section.
so find a copy of color_ls (for example: -HERE- and check which shell you are using and you too, can have an easy to read terminal display. you will need to change the name to ls!!!! (also, sometimes my router takes a little walk in the park..) ---
Jimr
--Tokyo--
Jimr
--Tokyo--