Changing the Iceweasel Icons

One of the little things I do not like about Debian (and there are not that many of them!) is that  the Iceweasel icons are…uhm…strange. Look at it:

The weasel’s body has a really odd, wide and flat shape (look at his hind leg!) and the poor creature looks exhausted and  sad. But when you consider what the Iceweasel folks want to suggest with the picture (access http: //www.geticeweasel.org/ with Iceweasel and you’ll see) the picture is not just odd but rather disturbing.

That Iceweasel has such a terrible icon is sad, especially since there have been so many good alternatives available from the very beginning. The Ubuntu Wiki contains a whole page of different icons that are terrific. My favourite is without a doubt this one:

It is easy to change the icon of Iceweasel’s launcher or menu item (if you use one), but how do change the icon that appears in the taskbar or the alt-tab dialog? It isn’t much harder, really.

Iceweasel stores its icons in /usr/share/iceweasel/chrome/icons/default and /usr/share/iceweasel/icons. Replace those icons with the icons of your choice. Make sure your new  icons have the same shape/size, name, and filetype — you can change all that with Gimp if necessary. Restart Iceweasel, and you’ll notice the icons have changed.

The Iceweasel icons stored in /usr/share/pixmaps and /usr/lib/iceweasel/ are linked to /usr/share/iceweasel/chrome/icons/default/ so they will be changed automatically when you change those icons.