How to Change the Folder Icon Color on MacOS Tahoe
With macOS Tahoe 26 and newer, you can change and customize the color of your folders as seen within the Finder. This is a fun way to customize the look and feel of using your Mac, and yet it’s simple to implement.
There are a variety of interesting ways to customize the Liquid Glass appearance of your Mac with macOS Tahoe, and using custom folder colors can really set the personalization apart of your Mac.
As you probably already guessed, you will need macOS Tahoe 26.0 or later to have this customization option available to MacOS, as earlier versions do not support the same capabilities. However, MacOS Sequoia and earlier can apply colors to folders by using Tags.
How to Customize Folder Icon Color on Mac
- From the Apple menu open “System Settings”
- Go to “Appearance”
- Look for “Folder Color” and then select the folder color from the options
- Optionally, choose a custom folder color
You’ll see the standard color spectrum options as default choices for folder color, but if you choose a custom color you can pick any color at all using the color picker.
Which folder color icon you prefer is entirely a matter of personal preference and taste.
Here are a few screenshot examples of different folder colors, as visible in Icon view of the MacOS Finder:
You can also choose the tinted or the Liquid Glass clear icon look, which is yet another way to customize the appearance of your Mac, but elaborating further on that is a subject for another article.
If you’re not a huge fan of the Liquid Glass look in Tahoe, you might choose a more subdued color for folders. You can also try to enable Reduce Transparency, which doesn’t really work anymore in Tahoe to actually turn off all transparency at the moment.
Custom folder icon colors are a neat way to personalize the look of your Mac, and don’t forget you can change and set custom icons too, a process which has worked the same since near ancient versions of Mac OS system software.
