IconBurglar Makes Icon Collecting Easy On A Mac

An unfortunate side effect of being a 20 year Mac user with a Mac web site is software. I collect Mac software. 200 titles and counting.

My newest addition is IconBurglar which extracts icons and resources from your Mac. Oh, I collect icons and sounds, too, so IconBurglar is the perfect utility to, ah, um, well, preview images and sounds.

Personally, I would have chosen a different name for IconBurglar, because it hints at some sort malfeasance on the part of the user. Hey, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. It’s just easier to ban guns.

IconBurglar is billed as an icon and resource extraction tool for the Mac. Why icons? Most Mac application and utility icons are very well crafted PNG files.

We often use an application’s icon for artwork in the software reviews we provide on Mac360.

That’s where my collection of icons comes in handy. Without the right tool the effort to grab and save icons is much more labor intensive. IconBurglar does it so fast that it seems as if the icon has been burgled.

It’s easy, too. Launch IconBurglar with a double click. A list of your Mac’s applications appears in a column on the left. Select an application or utility and the icon will appear on the right.

At the top are a few tabs. Info simply displays version and copyright information about the application or utility, as well as the location. The Icon tab will display the icon and a slider bar lets you view the icon in various sizes, from 32 pixels square to 512 pixels.

There’s also an Images tab and a Sounds tab to select, convert, and or save, respectively. Icons can be saved as PNG, TIFF, JPG, or ICNS files. They can also be dragged and dropped to your Mac’s desktop. What you do with them is up to you.

For sounds, when you find one you like in an application, you can Command-S to save it, because IconBurglar doesn’t modify or change any of the applications original files, and simply makes copies of what you like.

Some Mac applications are also Packages, which means other files are stored inside. iPhoto is a good example. Clicking the Images tab or Sounds tab in IconBurglar will reveal what’s inside iPhoto.

Ditto for OS X’s Mail application. Do you love that little woooosh sound that Mail makes when it sends email? It’s the Mail Sent.aiff file and IconBurgler shows you where it is and lets you save a copy.

What good is all this IconBurglar capability? Ah, there’s the rub. For the most part, icons and sound resources are bound by that pesky legal term copyright, so what you can do is somewhat limited; at least, legally.

If you collect icons and sounds, as I have for years, IconBurglar makes it easier to find and save what you want, where you want.

Otherwise, IconBurglar is fun and useful and gives you another window into the inner workings of your Mac.