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Generate macOS app icons using AI.

696 starsTypeScript

An open source tool for generating macOS app icons with AI

by Ikryanov·May 13, 2026·1 point·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●MidSolve My Problem

Yet another AI image generator, just wrapped for .icns export.

Strengths
  • •Exports full-bleed .icns bundles with correct iconset folder structure.
  • •Refine workflow lets you iterate on a chosen variant using it as reference.
  • •Squircle preview mask shows exactly how macOS will render the final icon.
Weaknesses
  • •Just a UI wrapper around OpenAI API; no novel model or technique involved.
  • •Requires Node.js 24 and MōBrowser dependency just to run a simple generator.
Target Audience

Indie developers and engineers building macOS apps

Similar To

IconJar · AppIcon.co · Midjourney

Post Description

I’m Vladimir. I’m a software engineer. In our company we often develop desktop apps for internal needs and prototyping. And every time I bump into the same problem: how do I make an icon for the macOS app I have just built?

I could use the existing icon generators, but they are basically just image converters. You upload an existing image, and the tool generates the required icon sizes and formats from it.

But I don’t have an image, and I’m not a designer. Asking designers to create an icon is not always an option.

I wanted something that could help me actually create an icon. Something where I can describe an idea, iterate on it over several rounds, experiment with materials, lighting, composition, and gradually arrive at an icon that feels like a real native macOS app icon.

Since I’m an engineer, I built a small tool that allows generating a macOS app icon using AI. It’s completely free and open source, so other engineers building desktop apps for macOS can use it too.

The app lets you generate the app icons from prompts, refine them conversationally ("make it more metallic", "simplify the shape", "add glass effect", etc.), and export the final icon in the `*.icns` format (you can just put it into your macOS app bundle) along with a folder containing the icon in different dimensions.

There are no subscriptions, no watermarking, no credits system, and the source code is fully available on GitHub.

Note 1: the app requires an OpenAI API key. I tried to use local models to generate images, but none of them can produce images with quality similar to Nano Banana 2 or ChatGPT.

Note 2: the generation speed varies from several seconds to up to a minute. I don’t know hot to speed it up yet (maybe generate 1 variant instead of 3).

GitHub: https://github.com/TeamDev-IP/MoBrowser-App-Icon-Maker

Download (signed & notarized): https://github.com/TeamDev-IP/MoBrowser-App-Icon-Maker/relea...

Feel free to try it out. Happy to answer questions or discuss implementation details.

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