I often need to use OS X icons on the web. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy matter to extract icons from Mac files or folders. The solution? IconGrabber.
It couldn’t be easier. Just drop the file or folder that you want the icon from onto IconGrabber, and choose a place to save it. The extension you choose determines the format, otherwise it defaults to tiff. That’s it!
If you’re a Quicksilver user, you can use the IconGrabber Quicksilver plugin. (It doesn’t require the IconGrabber application.) Once installed, you’ll get a “Save Icon To…” action. Not only can you save the icons of files and directories, you can save the icon of whatever appears in the first “object” pane. This is extremely handy.
Enjoy!
Update:
The Quicksilver plugin is now at version 0.95. Notable changes include:
- Forcing direct object to load icon.
- Indirect object for “Save Icon To…” starts at
IconGrabberSaveTodefaults key. Format used is set by theIconGrabberFormatdefaults key. Uses png by default. - “Save Icon As…” action added. Indirect objects have different image formats. Images are saved to the
IconGrabberSaveTodefaults key. - Image files have the
IconGrabberAppendkey appended to the filename (”-icon” by default).
For example, if you want to use the tiff format for the “Save Icon To…” action, run defaults write com.blacktree.Quicksilver IconGrabberFormat tiff.
If you want to change the directory the images are generated in by “Save Icon As…”, run defaults write com.blacktree.Quicksilver IconGrabberSaveTo "~/NewDirectory".
24 Comments so far
Leave a commentGreat! Thank you. The QS plugin made it for me
proclaimed by mindprint on November 20, 2007 6:16 pm | Permalink
This is very handy for me. Thanks a lot!
(How do we save them as different formats with the Quicksilver plugin?)
uttered by Jono on November 20, 2007 7:39 pm | Permalink
Thanks.
I was unsure of the best way to implement this since we can’t have another argument for the action. However, you run the command
defaults write com.blacktree.Quicksilver IconGrabberFormat format(where “format” is one of “png”, “tiff”, “jpg”, “bmp” or “gif”) to set the format used by the plugin.written by Ankur on November 20, 2007 7:53 pm | Permalink
Thanks a lot for explaining
So it wouldn’t be possible for something like this?
‘Whatever_you want to convert’ >Tab> Save as Icon… >Tab> JPG
(Where the 5 types available can be selected in the third pane).
If that’s not possible then thanks again for already making life easier for me.
expressed by Jono on November 20, 2007 9:12 pm | Permalink
Thanks for the QS plugin
But it would have been great if it supported Leopards icon size (512×512). Maybe a option to choose witch size you want the output to be?
uttered by Espen on November 21, 2007 2:33 am | Permalink
With QS plugin, I only get generic app icon, (ruler, pencil, etc.). I’ve tried with both 3rd-party and Apple apps. Any suggestions?
Also, with folders, Downloads for example, I also only get generic folder icon, not customized folder.
Thanks.
published by John on November 21, 2007 7:13 am | Permalink
Certainly. I’ll get this into the plugin (and the app) very soon.
The “Load icons” checkbox might not be ticked in the QS Appearance prefs.
Well, yes it’s easily possible. But was hard to decide whether the location or the format was more important to put in the indirect pane. I can make another plugin for you so you can choose the format.
recorded by Ankur on November 21, 2007 7:20 am | Permalink
Version 0.95 of the Quicksilver plugin is up. Added a little info to the post.
Possible now with the “Save Icon As…” action.
Certainly shouldn’t happen with this version.
I’m so glad Quicksilver is open source now. Makes things much easier.
This is proving a little tricky. I’ll work on it.
recorded by Ankur on November 21, 2007 10:56 am | Permalink
Is there a way to specify the output size? For instance, I’d like all my icons to be exactly 125px wide (instead of what seems to be the default 128). Is there any way to make that happen? If so this would save me a ton of work. Thanks.
declared by Mat Lu on November 21, 2007 4:21 pm | Permalink
Ok! New version of the plugin allows you to set the output image size by running:
Replace 128 with whatever size you need.
professed by Ankur on November 21, 2007 4:47 pm | Permalink
Brilliant! Thank you so much for the update
I guess if people wanted to specify the format & size the icon is saved in each time you could have a option to work similar to the Image Manipulation plugin. Something like:
‘Whatever you want to convert’ >Tab> Save as Icon… >Tab> (enters text mode where you’d write something like…) ‘128 jpg’ or ‘256 png’ etc.
And/or maybe you could have something in Quicksilver Preferences (in the same place as Clipboard, iTunes, Tags etc.) Where you could set a default location to save the images, default size, default format etc.
reasonded by Jono on November 21, 2007 6:03 pm | Permalink
This is wonderful! Thanks so much.
written by Mat Lu on November 21, 2007 6:58 pm | Permalink
Thanks.
Test version of the app (does resizing). Download link. Please confirm whether this works. Set desired size in the save panel.
recorded by Ankur on November 22, 2007 8:36 pm | Permalink
Works fine for me
I guess the next step for the app version would be to add a drop down list to select file type (that would remember your last selection).
Plus being able to specify a default location to save them to (or remember the last location you saved to) in Preferences?
uttered by Jono on November 22, 2007 9:58 pm | Permalink
Drop down and remembering directories added to test version.
proclaimed by Ankur on November 23, 2007 12:07 pm | Permalink
I think the main thing was getting the icon out. It’s a workspace call and it needs a Cocoa app to get at it. Then it needs some clever craftsmanship around that so it works right. And that makes it brilliant in its simplicity. It does not need to save to different formats because you can do that already. As I understand it already does intuitively from the file extension - this is very cool. I’d just like to remind people AK did a nice thing here and we should thank him and there isn’t necessarily a ‘next thing’.
written by Rick on November 26, 2007 2:03 pm | Permalink
Fantastic!
Works great for me, thanks
disclosed by Jono on November 26, 2007 5:58 pm | Permalink
Nice work Ankur… but only one problem. I’ve tried the suggestion you’ve made about the bigger icons but the plugin still gives me 128×128 icons….
Any suggestions?
spoken by Leon on November 28, 2007 2:03 am | Permalink
Leon,
defaults write com.blacktree.Quicksilver IconGrabberSize 256works for me. Try relaunching QS?stated by Ankur on November 28, 2007 7:36 am | Permalink
Sorry, I’m not too sure whether I understand this correctly or not?
With the new version of the plug-in is it possible to specify a different icon size each time? (on the fly) or do you have to change something in Preferences it will stay at this size?
E.g. ‘Whatever you want to convert’ >Tab> Save as Icon…>Tab> (enters text mode where you’d write something like…) ‘128 jpg’ or ‘256 png’ etc.
Also is it possible for me to alter somewhere in the plug-in plist file so that the the Save Icon As… action saves as JPG as default? (instead of TIFF)
And still keeps PNG as the default format for Save Icon To…
recorded by Jono on December 9, 2007 2:51 am | Permalink
Unfortunately in current version (b56a7) the text based size (e.g. “512 png” for indirect pane) approach crashes QS because of an “index out of range” exception on NSArray. Pity that the testing version is not available anymore (404 on the link).
“defaults write com.blacktree.Quicksilver IconGrabberSize 512″ does work though once you restart QS. Again thank you Ankur for everything you have done for the QS community!
composed by Andre B on September 6, 2009 7:28 pm | Permalink
Hm as I do not know how to contact Ankur directly, I might as well ask here if there are any plans of making the source code available for the IconGrabber.qsplugin. (yes, I do know that this post was started 2 yrs ago and I also do know that a download package is available. Last time I was looking it didn’t include any sources however). Would be nice to take a look at those. Don’t worry I do not have anything commercial it’s just invaluable for learning more about QS internals so that maybe, just maybe enough knowlegde can be gathered to fix some of current release’s (b56a7) bugs.
declared by Andre B on September 12, 2009 9:32 am | Permalink
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