Icon Preview For Mac

You often can’t really tell how an icon will look in the Dock or menu bar until you actually see it there. By then, the app is likely already compiled, and replacing it takes a lot of extra work.

Icon Preview is meant to help developers create the best-looking icons for their apps. It allows you to preview them in the Dock and menu bar as you’re designing them, well before you compile your project.

After launching the app, you’ll see two new icons in your Dock and menu bar. Assuming you have your images prepared, just drop them over the app’s icons to preview them. You’ll see exactly what they’ll look like when your application is finished.

If any changes have to be made, there’s no need to load the images again. Once the files are modified, the previews will be updated automatically. You can also right-click an image and preview it from the Open With > Icon Preview menu item.

There are a couple more interesting features to mention. The first allows you to preview multiple icons sequentially, for three seconds each. You’ll need to use the shortcuts provided here by the developer.

The second provides integration with Sketch, enabling you to simply drag an artboard onto the Dock icon to preview it. If you want the icon to be updated automatically when you save it in Sketch, you’ll need to use a Sketch plugin available here.

For such a simple app, Icon Preview can be tremendously helpful. It makes it much easier to create the perfect app icons and ensures you won’t need to recompile your project just to change an icon that doesn’t look as good as you thought it would.