July 23, 2008 in Tips and Tricks | 4 Comments
When browsed through your inbox with your Mail application, sometimes you need to flag certain useful email for future reference. With simple keystrokes, Shift Command L you can flag selected mails.
And now, do you want to change the icon of the flag as shown in screenshot below?
Mark As Starred
If you want to do so, follow these steps :
Change Flag Icon
- Open your Finder
- Go to Applications folder Shift Command A
- Look for Mail application, Control Click on it and choose Show Package Contents
- Once you're inside Mail package contents, follow these paths : Contents ▸ Resources ▸ flagged.tiff
- That's the flagged mark with 16x16 dimensions. I recommend you to have a backup of this icon file
- Find other image file that has 16x16 dimensions. If that file extension isn't .tiff, open that file with Preview and save as .tiff
- Rename the file to flagged.tiff and replace the original flag mark
Change Header Icon
You will notice that even though you've changed the flag into other image, let's say star, the header is still displaying flag. For the sake of completeness, you need to change the icon file for the flag header also.
- Look for file Mail ▸ Contents ▸ Resources ▸ flagged_header.tiff
- The file dimension is 16x16. For better result, you need to set canvas size to 16x16 and have the displayed image set to only 12x12
- As what you've done before, back it up and replace it with the new one
Now, you've got your new flag marking. The star icon I used in the example is taken from Famfamfam.com icons collection. For more small icons, you can also go to Pinvoke.com.
And here is the result :
Click here to download 2 new star icons and 2 original flag icons.
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4 Comments
paxton
Thanks, you've saved my day - I was looking for this keystroke for ages now.
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rupert
Cool tip! Thanks. To make this transition 100% complete, you also need to change the icon for the flag button in the toolbar. The file to change is named TB_Flag. It sits in the same folder (Mail.app > Contents > Resources). You can even use the same 16x16 image. However, you need to save it as .png with alpha.
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Bill Lewis
paxton you fine these helpful "Finder" short cuts Finder Views: Command 1 = Switch window to icon view Command 2 = Switch window to list view Command 3 = Switch window to column view Command 4 = Switch window to coverflow view Command Y = Toggle Quick Look on and off Command Option Y = Toggle Slideshow mode Open Items Command Shift i = Open iDisk Comand Shift k = Open Network Command Shift a = Open Application folder Command Shift d = Open Desktop folder
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glucong
Great tip. Thanks for the orange star tiff as well. It's more friendly to the eye than Mail's red flag. Is there a way to use concurrent, multiple Mail flag icons as well? Thanks.
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