Alternative iPhone Mirroring Icon

One of the headlining features in macOS Sequoia is the new iPhone Mirroring app. However, in my opinion, its kinda lame…

I thought I could do better. For my new icon, I designed the entire icon to look more like an iPhone, with a focus on the Dynamic Island as the identifying feature. Here it is:

This new icon has a size-accurate Natural Titanium frame and screen bezel, and a large Dynamic Island to make is easily recognizable. The imagine inside is the default iOS 18 wallpaper.

I have created an ICNS file for the icon, which you can download here. You can also download the original icon image here. Unfortunately, in order to replace the current icon with my new one, you have to temporarily disable System Integrity Protection. Here is a useful guide on how to change the icon (at your own risk!). Update: turns out this method doesn’t work anymore. I am trying to find a way to update system icons… if you know of something, please let me know! We have found a method! A reader shared some Terminal commands that essentially create a shortcut (symlink) to the iPhone Mirroring app that looks and acts like a standalone app. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open Terminal
2. Type cd Applications and press the Enter key. This takes you to the Applications folder in your user (home) folder.
3. Enter mkdir "iPhone Mirroring.app". This makes a folder that has the appearance of an app.
4. Enter cd iPhone\ Mirroring.app. This takes you to the folder you just created.
5. Enter ln -s /System/Applications/iPhone\ Mirroring.app/Contents. This creates a shortcut to the regular iPhone Mirroring app. Nothing is modified with the original app, it’s simply a shortcut.
6. Now, in Finder, you can go to your user/home folder, open the Applications folder, and change the icon to the newly created “app” from there. Then, just drag it into your Dock and it will operate just like a normal app!

Thank you, Ash!