Add custom genre icons to iTunes 10

Sep 09, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

In iTunes 10 Grid View: Genres, you can create your very own icons to represent any genres you like, even custom genres.

Disclaimer: Do this at your own risk and of course make backups of any files you alter.

First, be sure iTunes is not running. Then, right-click on iTunes and select 'Show Package Contents.' Navigate to Contents » Resources. Inside there you will see lots of really colorful genre images labled 'genre-pop.jpg' or 'genre-rock.jpg' and so on.

Simply copy one of those images to your desktop. Open it up in Photoshop (or your graphics editor of choice) and customize it to your delight. The reason for using a duplicated file is only for the sake of ease in keeping the image size and aspect ratio the same. Save the new image as a flattened jpg. Name it with something like 'genre-mycustomgenre.jpg.' Put this file into the Resources folder. You will need to Authenticate in order to do this.

Now copy the file 'genres.plist' file to your desktop. Open it with Property List Editor (included in the Developer Tools). Duplicate the structure of one of the existing items, substituting your genre name and resource file name. Now save and move this file to the Resources folder.

Start iTunes and assign a song to your new genre and go to Grid View: genres and check it out.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. This is one of a class of modifications, that while some people may want to try them, they should be aware this can break the digital signature of the application and cause updating and other problems. My strong advice is to make a backup copy of the original application before doing any of this kind of tinkering, whether that be with iTunes, Safari, or any other app where the package contents are being modified. I usually make a Zip archive of the program before doing anything to the original. Time Machine backups will work, too. This all makes me nostalgic for ResEdit.]

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