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Dear Apple Control Freaks, I shouldn't have to disable SIP to change my Safari or TextEdit icons!
- Thread starter Jess13
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If someone kicks your door in at 5am tomorrow, it's Jony Ive.
disable sip, change the icons, reboot & enable sip. not complicated... if changing those icons is important to u.
But what if someone were to slip malicious code into your icon png???
What then?
What then?
But what if someone were to slip malicious code into your icon png???
What then?
OP would likely blame Apple for allowing such an attack...and get even more irritated...
I know how to disable/re-enable SIP. I don't have an SSD; restarting HDD is time-consuming and irritating. It is ridiculous, that to change ICONS you have to disable SIP. OS X is really that weak nowadays!? Ridiculous.
Did I just read that right? restarting an HDD is time-consuming and irritating???? Seriously? That's what you find irritating?
...Then again how would I know......I have an SSD!!!! Ha!
This has nothing to do with OS X's weakness.
Replacing the icon is indeed harmless, but it's a little tweak that still modifies an app.
You can always disable SIP and repair your permissions every once in a while if that's such a big deal (and yes I know the new disk utility doesn't repair permissions anymore........)
But why is it so important to change an icon anyway? I mean it was cool to play with icons on MacOS 9 but since OS X came out I don't even remember one instance where I told myself "I can't stand this icon I need another one". I don't care. I'm more interested in the application behind the icon.
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Yes it is, moreso because to disable then re-enable requires two restarts. It is very time-consuming and irritating, considering just a few months ago I could change any icons in literally 5 seconds.
I would have to disagree with you: Apple has decided that changing APPLE application icons has to be blocked by SIP - only Apple's applications. I can change non-Apple application icons with SIP enabled. But not Safari, or TextEdit, or iTunes, etc. Why not? Apple apps suddenly extremely weak security-wise?
I don't want to disable SIP, as it disables other necessary security protections. But this is just the changing of APPLE application ICONS, you know, just the ICONS for the default apps. I can change non-Apple app icons with SIP, but not Apple app icons?
Ridiculous.
I use Safari, TextEdit and iTunes daily. I have always changed up my icons regularly. But I now can't simply change their icons like when using Yosemite, Mountain Lion, or when I used to have Tiger? 2005 OS X more secure than the decade later 2015 OS X?
Well our tastes are different, clearly. Some Apple icons are decent, others are good. While some icons are atrocious, just absolutely disgusting. Look at the TextEdit icon default. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
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Such as? SIP didn't exist before 10.11. It's not something that adds anything new to the OS. It just prevents clueless users to mess with their OS.
I have to disable it because some of my audio interfaces wouldn't run otherwise. My system is as solid as ever, and if I want to repair my permissions, I can. If I'm root, I know what I'm doing. If I install an application, I know what I'm doing, if I want to play in /usr/local/bin, I know what to do. Average user doesn't even know about the "hidden treasures" of OS X, and if he does, he's too scared to go there anyway. I never had any trouble before, on any Unix flavor I've worked on. To me, this whole new "protection" in El Capitan is an unnecessary gimmick. But again, that's just me.
Yeah, I do agree some icons are ugly. But like I said, I simply don't care.
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seriously. disable SIP once. change the icons. re-enable SIP. done. it's not complicated, and would take less time than you've spent posting about it.
Apple catered to those marginal user cases up till and including Yosemite though. (I also change my icons, dock and finder. Disabled SIP and no intention to enable it again. I've managed without it for years so I'll soldier on.)
Ugh, yeah, you would say that because you have no idea what you're talking about. It was just 3 months ago when this was possible and no issue. I have been using custom icons in OS X for years, probably before you first bought a Mac. I was using the custom UI ShapeShifter “haxies” from Unsanity a decade ago.
I'm a long-time Mac user. Don't be dumb.
That's the problem: I have for years regularly changed my icons often, mixing and matching freely.
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yes, and things change. now, in the current OS, you have to disable SIP to change system icons. so do it, get on with your day, and stop complaining about it. if it bothers you that much, go back to yosemite....or OS9 (and you can reinstall shapeshifter). what is it you're trying to accomplish in this thread anyway? that you're mad things have changed, and you have to now spend several minutes adapting??
Why is this so complicated? If SIP interferes with your flow, just disable it and move forward to tweak as you want. You've been using OS X long enough to know how to proceed safely, just do it and get your blood pressure to go back down.
I remember in 5th grade, being the little ass that I was, I would mess with the computers in my classroom which ran OS9 or OS8 at the time.
I would make an alias to Trash, rename it to "Macintosh HD" and change the icon to look like the hard drive icon. I would then rename the actual drive to "Games" or something and change the icon to be something silly. Inside the real Trash, I would create a folder structure similar to the actual hard drive. I sure got my teacher and classmates to accidentally delete a bunch of files...
I bet a similar icon swapping tactic could be used by malware to trick users into running an app. If you change the icon on the real Safari to something that looks unfriendly, like the Terminal icon, and then introduce an app called Safary with the Safari icon, many users would run it.
I would make an alias to Trash, rename it to "Macintosh HD" and change the icon to look like the hard drive icon. I would then rename the actual drive to "Games" or something and change the icon to be something silly. Inside the real Trash, I would create a folder structure similar to the actual hard drive. I sure got my teacher and classmates to accidentally delete a bunch of files...
I bet a similar icon swapping tactic could be used by malware to trick users into running an app. If you change the icon on the real Safari to something that looks unfriendly, like the Terminal icon, and then introduce an app called Safary with the Safari icon, many users would run it.
There is a difference between using a feature and using undocumented behaviour. I don't recall Apple ever documenting or encouraging hacking or customisation of stock apps. Simply because it is possible to achieve something by utilising side-effects of how the OS works, does not make it a official feature of the OS and it certainly does not meant that the OS caters to these uses. Apple has made it clear years ago that it will lock down insecure modifications to stock software. So yeah, don't be dumb.
What I hope to accomplish is that some employees at Apple taking El Capitan pulses from Apple-centric message boards throughout the Internet happen upon my thread and realize the problem then fix this bulls**t. And if you have no problem with this issue, you could quit reading my thread and replying to it.
You realize that, for more than a decade, until three months ago, that is, you could simply copy/paste any icons onto the top-left icon in Get Info panes for any Apple application or other system file? Literally 5 seconds. It was just brilliant. Apple has encouraged customization, in this form, nurtured it and provided the best and simplest way possible to change icons, with no limitations on changing Apple app icons. Now that has been broken because some moron(s) at Apple decided to cripple OS X.
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Just disable the feature and stop moaning. SIP is designed to protect users from needlessly jeopardising their systems and trusted applications with root. If you can handle the responsibility of root then there is nothing against disabling SIP.
You can also disable just certain parts of SIP, like filesystem restrictions, NVRAM, unsigned kexts, debugging and so forth. See here: https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/17452.
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i do this when needed. i installed bartender, removed the location services icon in the menubar. i used liteicon to change almost all system icons (finder, trash, etc etc).
the whole point is...you can disable SIP, make your changes, then RE-ENABLE it...and the changes will stick. meanwhile...how is it this thread is still going?
the whole point is...you can disable SIP, make your changes, then RE-ENABLE it...and the changes will stick. meanwhile...how is it this thread is still going?
Actually you can most likely blame a non-Apple employee who prob did something to there system and caused the OS to crash which, in turn, made Apple add this feature to prevent morons like that from damaging their system.
I have a late 2011 15" MBP with an updated BT card so I could use Continuity/Handoff. I had to disable SIP in order to install the modded kexts and have yet to re-enable it. Most likely won't. Am I freaking out about it? No. Am I going on with my day knowing all I had to do was disable SIP to get it working? Yes. It's plain and simple. Disable, re-enable, leave it off.....do what you need to do so you're happy. Whatevs your choice, don't expect anything to get fixed since there's nothing broken. Change your icons, smoke a bowl, and relax.
And for what it's worth, I've been using Mac since the Apple II GS
Awesome, thanks for this! Didn't know you could disable certain parts. Curious tho, is there an explanation as to what each part/function does? Would like to get a better understanding what they are/do.
It should also be remembered once again that OS X is (now) a consumer operating system first, used predominantly by consumers who just don't know better and legitimately need root access to begin with. It makes a lot of sense to enable reasonable security measures to protect such users while offering a way for experienced users to disable them if desired. If you think you need this kind of system access: congratulations, you're part of the minority of tech-savvy users for which the csrutil CLI was made.
Unrestricted root access made a lot of sense in the days when most Unix users were tech-savvy, had specific needs to modify the system and understood the risks, and when third-party software wasn't so deceptive to acquire this access for malicious purposes. Times have changed and root access is just a very bad idea for most people. SIP isn't even controversial in Unix, in fact, OS X has always had the securelevel feature of BSD(!) that is still present in OS X. Apple reduced the level from 1 to 0 with Leopard and never changed it back.
As far as I know, these are undocumented, i.e. private functions. They are to some extent self-explanatory though (e.g. kext signing, using debuggers and DTrace, changing NVRAM from within the system). I presume, but am not sure, that disabling filesystem restrictions is what you want to override. I have no clue what Apple Internal does though.
Unrestricted root access made a lot of sense in the days when most Unix users were tech-savvy, had specific needs to modify the system and understood the risks, and when third-party software wasn't so deceptive to acquire this access for malicious purposes. Times have changed and root access is just a very bad idea for most people. SIP isn't even controversial in Unix, in fact, OS X has always had the securelevel feature of BSD(!) that is still present in OS X. Apple reduced the level from 1 to 0 with Leopard and never changed it back.
As far as I know, these are undocumented, i.e. private functions. They are to some extent self-explanatory though (e.g. kext signing, using debuggers and DTrace, changing NVRAM from within the system). I presume, but am not sure, that disabling filesystem restrictions is what you want to override. I have no clue what Apple Internal does though.