Install iconsur with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• iconsur

Project history

IconSur appeared during the macOS Big Sur design transition, when app icons moved toward rounded-square, depth-styled iconography. Its README describes a CLI that can search for a related iOS App Store icon or generate an icon locally from the original app icon with configurable background color and scaling.

The npm package record shows the iconsur package created on 2020-06-27, matching the Big Sur-era demand for replacing or normalizing third-party macOS app icons.

Adoption history

The project distributed through npm first and later became available through Homebrew. Its README documents both brew install iconsur and npm install -g iconsur as installation paths.

Homebrew packages iconsur as a macOS-only formula with Node and Python-related support, reflecting the tool's hybrid shell, JavaScript, and macOS automation surface.

How it is used

The documented workflow is to run iconsur set against a .app bundle, refresh the icon cache with iconsur cache, and optionally use flags for App Store region, local generation, input icon, scale, and color.

The README also documents an unset command, making the tool reversible for users experimenting with app icon theming.

Why package nerds care

IconSur is a small but very package-manager-shaped tool: it packages a platform-specific aesthetic tweak as a repeatable CLI command. It matters less as a general image converter and more as a snapshot of the Big Sur icon-customization moment in Mac tooling.

Timeline

• 2020: iconsur package is created on npm.
• 2020: README describes Big Sur-style adaptive icon generation using related iOS App Store icons or local source icons.
• 2020s: Homebrew formula packages iconsur for macOS users.

Related projects

• The README credits LiteIcon as inspiration and fileicon by mklement0 for icon-customization scripting. It is also adjacent to macOS Big Sur replacement icon sets and other app-icon generators.

Sources

• Homebrew metadata documents the brew formula, macOS-only packaging, dependencies, and source tarball.
• The project README documents purpose, installation, command examples, options, and credits.
• npm registry metadata provides package creation and repository information.