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When I downloaded Skype, I noticed that, in place of a normal "disk image" icon, there was a custom icon, and when I double clicked on the icon, the window used a colorful image as the background, prompting me to drag the skype icon into the applications folder.

How can I do that with my applications?

Thanks, Jason

Community
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stalepretzel
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3 Answers3

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Let me add to the other answers jwz's howto on setting view options on .dmg files. This is the simplest one that I got to work with no problems.

Also, to change the icon from the default .dmg icon:

  • In the Finder, open an inspector window (^I) for the file whose icon you want to use, click on the icon at the top (it will get a blue border) and copy it to the clipboard (^C).

  • Then open another inspector for your .dmg, click on the icon and press ^V to paste

(you can change the icon for any file like this).

For this kind of thing, you can always look at open-source programs and see what they do to get a similar result. For example here are the relevant source files for building pretty dmg files in:

Rich
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dF.
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4

If you’re interested in a commercial solution, there are a number of DMG designer apps available, including the following I gleaned from a MacUpdate search:

Ben Stiglitz
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2

This is a great freeware solution for a custom background with zero hassle:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dmgcreator/

SchmitzIT
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user1774760
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