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Change Flag Icon of Mail

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

  1. Open your Finder
  2. Go to Applications folder Shift Command A
  3. Look for Mail application, Control Click on it and choose Show Package Contents
  4. Once you're inside Mail package contents, follow these paths : Contents ▸ Resources ▸ flagged.tiff
  5. That's the flagged mark with 16x16 dimensions. I recommend you to have a backup of this icon file
  6. Find other image file that has 16x16 dimensions. If that file extension isn't .tiff, open that file with Preview and save as .tiff
  7. 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.

  1. Look for file Mail ▸ Contents ▸ Resources ▸ flagged_header.tiff
  2. 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
  3. 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.

Categories: Tips and Tricks
Tags: Fun, Hack, Trick

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19 Comments

paxton 

Thanks, you've saved my day - I was looking for this keystroke for ages now.

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.

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

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.

Scott 

I ended up getting carried away, and changed my toolbar icon, as well as all text in the toolbar or menus to say "Star", "Unstar", "Starred", and "Unstarred". 



The toolbar icon is TB_Flag.png. Any PNG with the same dimensions should work, just make sure it has a transparent background so that it will match the toolbar. 



If you use Mail in English, the text can be changed by editing the Localizable.strings file in the Mail.app/Resources/English.lproj/ Folder with a text editor.  If you use Mail in a different language than English, the file will naturally be in a different folder.  Just remember not to change anything to the left of the "=" signs.  The file is surprisingly well annotated when you open it up. 



Just remember to be careful and keep a backup of anything you change just in case you mess anything up or want to go back.

tlc 

thanks this is great but what I'd really like to do is have multiple flags i.e. "important info", "to do", "done" --  is this possible? and if so how.

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GeekRD 

Great stuff. Just found this and used the icons as well as  all the context menu stuff as well and I love the look. Obvious, simple and clean. 

Thanks Scott for the comment on the menus - I wouldn't have known where to look for that and was reticent to make changes if visuals and context weren't going to be the same.

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