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Give any folder a skin.
Your best memories wear the same plain folder as your old paperwork. FolderSkin gives every folder a skin that feels like what's inside it: a golden-hour film still for summer photos, a vintage travel poster for a trip, pop art for a video project, soft pastels for a birthday. Drop a folder on the window, try skins on it, and apply the one you love. Pick from free community packs, use a photo of your own, design one yourself from a colour, a word or an emoji, or describe any style and let AI paint it.
Download free · folderskin.app · Community packs · Share a skin pack · Build from source · ⭐ Star on GitHub
Free · Open source · No account · No tracking
Dark mode
| If you want to... | Do this |
|---|---|
| Get your first skins | The first launch offers the community's packs, with Classic Art picked for you |
| Give a folder a new look | Drop the folder on the window, click a skin, press Apply skin |
| Do the folders inside it too | Turn on Include subfolders under the folder, then Apply to all of them |
| Give a drive a new look | Drop the drive on the window, or pick it, then Apply skin: every skin is drawn on that kind of drive |
| Use a photo of your own | Drop the picture on the window, or press Add your photo |
| Design your own | Design your own: start from a colour, a label, an emoji or a photo, change anything, then Save & apply |
| Have an AI paint one | Generate with AI, with your own API key, or the prompt for Grok's or ChatGPT's chat under No API key? |
| Get FolderSkin's own skins | Community opens on Official: open a skin, then Use this skin |
| Get skins other people made | Community, then add a pack, or Use just one of its skins |
| Share yours | A skin's ⋯ menu → Share with community |
| Find a skin again | The tags along the top, ⌘F / Ctrl+F, the filter button (colour, pack, when you added it and more), or the star for Favourites |
| Undo it | Revert, or Remove custom icon on a folder that already has one, puts the operating system's icon back |
Everything except the few things that need the internet. There's no account, no paywall and nothing that tracks you: the one thing FolderSkin reports is that a community pack or skin was added, by nothing but the pack's id and the picture's hash, so folderskin.app can show how often each is added. On a Mac the download is under 20 MB.
| Stays on your computer | Goes online |
|---|---|
| Your folders and the icons FolderSkin writes | An AI request, when you make one: sent to the provider you picked, with your key |
| Every picture you add and every skin you make | Community and the first launch, which read the shared packs from packs.folderskin.app, or from GitHub when that doesn't answer |
| Your AI keys, encrypted | The update check: when it opens, FolderSkin reads the newest release's version file from GitHub |
| Favourites, tags and settings | Adding a pack or one skin from Community: nothing but the pack's id and the skin's picture hash goes to FolderSkin's community service, which counts each once a day per network and keeps no address (details) |
The privacy policy lists everything FolderSkin sends, where it goes, and what the community service keeps.
The first time it opens, FolderSkin plays a short welcome and then offers the community's skin packs, with Classic Art picked for you. Add any you like or none: each pack is added whole or not at all, and the library can always be filled later from Community. The welcome never shows again.
The first launch
- Drag a folder onto the folder panel on the right, or click the empty folder to pick one.
- Click a skin in the library to try it on. The folder panel shows the result straight away. The sidebar picks All skins, Yours or Favourites, the tags along the top narrow that down, and ⌘F / Ctrl+F searches.
- Press Apply skin. The folder is marked Applied, and Show in Finder opens it.
- Press Revert to put the operating system's default icon back. A folder that already has a custom icon offers Remove custom icon as soon as you pick it.
The folder panel's round button closes it, to give the library the room, and opens it again (⇧⌘\ on a Mac, Ctrl+Shift+\ elsewhere). It sits in the window's top right corner on a Mac, and at the panel's top left on Windows, in line with the library's buttons. The panel stays as you left it, and choosing a folder opens it.
To give the folders inside it the same skin, turn on Include subfolders under the folder's name. It counts them in the background with no limit (all levels down, leaving out hidden folders, app bundles and other disks), and the button becomes Apply to 25 folders, or however many there are. Choose picks which of them go. More than ten asks before it starts, and a big run says how much space the icons take. The run goes on in the background, so you can pick another folder or use the rest of the app meanwhile: the folder panel and the foot of the sidebar show how far it has got, Stop ends it after the folder in hand, and the summary says what changed, which folders couldn't be and why, and offers to carry on or try those again. A notification says when it's done if FolderSkin isn't in front. Revert all takes off exactly what the run put on.
A drive works the same way. Drop it on the window, or pick it where the open panel lists your drives, and the folder panel says what kind of drive it is and shows every skin drawn on that kind of drive, with the skins made for drives first. Apply skin gives the drive its own icon, and Include subfolders gives the folders on it the skin as folders. A Mac's or a Linux PC's startup disk, and a drive that's read-only, can't have an icon of their own, and the panel says so. docs/DRIVES.md has every kind of drive and where each system keeps a drive's icon.
To use your own picture, drop it on the window or press Add your photo. It is saved under Yours and stays there until you delete it, which asks first. A finished folder on a flat magenta background, like the ones the chat prompt below produces, is cut out and used as it is. Any other picture is wrapped onto FolderSkin's folder.
Every skin you add has a ⋯ menu: rename it (a double click on its name, or F2, jumps straight
there), give it tags (they become filters along the top),
see how it was made (the AI model and prompt, or the pack and who shared it), share it or delete
it. AI results are tagged with their style, such as airbrush, as they arrive. Export icon
saves any skin on its own, drawn as its preview shows it: an ICNS for macOS or an ICO for Windows
with every size in it, a PNG or a JPEG, an iconset for Xcode, an iOS app icon, a website's
favicons, or a new folder wearing it.
Settings, at the bottom of the sidebar, holds the theme, your AI keys, what sharing fills in and where your skins are saved. Hover the version badge beside the logo for About.
 Classic Art |
 Scientists - Pop Art |
 Watercolour World |
 Countries in Paper |
FolderSkin ships no skins of its own. People share skins and packs of skins through FolderSkin, free for everyone. The first launch offers them, and Community has them any time. Adding a pack puts its skins in your library with their tags, and the Install button on a pack in the gallery on folderskin.app opens FolderSkin and adds it for you. Packs marked Official are ones the maintainer vouches for. Community opens on Official, FolderSkin's own collection of skins that belong to no pack, free to use under MIT and growing over time. Use this skin on one of them, or Use on any skin in a pack, saves just that skin in your library, picked and ready to apply, and a check mark shows the skins you have already. Classic Art is a good first pack: sixteen public-domain paintings, from the Mona Lisa to The Starry Night, each painted onto a folder. To share yours, open a skin's ⋯ menu and choose Share with community, or use Community → Share your skins for several. You verify your computer once in the browser, with no account, and a person reviews the pack before it joins Community for everyone. Save a folder in the same dialog writes the pack as files instead. Pictures are shared losslessly, so a pack looks exactly as you made it. docs/PACKS.md has the contract and its limits: 1 to 50 skins a pack, pictures up to 1024 px and 1.5 MB, 64 MB a pack, licensed CC0, CC BY 4.0 or MIT.
Design your own, in the sidebar, makes a skin from scratch, offline. Start from a plain colour, a label, an emoji, two tones, glass, stripes or a photo with a caption, then change all of it:
- any colour with any transparency, and gradients
- words in seventeen font styles, which can curve into an arch
- emoji, thirteen shapes, and ten patterns down to film grain
- your own pictures, with adjustments
- shadows, glows and sticker edges
The Folder skeleton switch shows the design on the folder or flat, and the icon beside it at the sizes Finder draws shows how it reads. Make a see-through glass folder, choose Free icon for a sticker that isn't folder-shaped at all, or start on a drive, from a USB stick to a server, with the drive you chose first. Save & apply puts it on your folder or drive, and Edit design in its ⋯ menu opens it again. docs/COMPOSER.md has the details.
The composer
FolderSkin can make a skin from a description. The Local Model paints it on your own computer, for free: set it up once, and it needs no key and sends nothing anywhere. It runs on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later, and on Windows and Linux PCs. Or use your own API key from a provider you already use. The key is encrypted and stored on your computer (with no keychain password prompts), FolderSkin has no server of its own, and nothing is sent anywhere until you press Enter. Open Generate with AI and describe a scene. Type / for thirty styles, ideas to start from and the prompts you've saved, and @ to pick what it's for: the Mac's, Windows' or the Linux folder, any drive each system shows, or a Free icon that stands on its own. For a folder, choose Whole folder (the model paints the whole folder from FolderSkin's template, like a poster) or Just the art (flat art wrapped onto FolderSkin's folder), and a drive has Whole drive and Just the art the same way. With a drive chosen, a new chat starts on it. Words in quotes are lettered on the skin. Every result is saved to Yours and can be tried on at once.
Choose where pictures are made in Settings → AI Provider: set up the Local Model there, or paste a key. Each provider's name links to the page where you make one.
| Provider | Models | Per image | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
OpenAI | GPT Image 2.5 Flare, GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst, GPT Image 2 | ~$0.05–0.20 |
 |
xAI Grok | Grok Imagine 2.0, Grok Imagine | ~$0.02–0.04 |
 |
Recraft | Recraft V4.1, Recraft V4.1 Flash | ~$0.007–0.035 |
 |
Google Gemini | Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, Gemini 3 Pro Image, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image | ~$0.034–0.14 |
 |
Black Forest Labs | FLUX.2 pro, FLUX.2 max, FLUX.2 flex, FLUX.2 klein 4B | ~$0.015–0.10 |
 |
Stability AI | Stable Image Ultra, Stable Image Core | ~$0.03–0.08 |
 |
Ideogram | Ideogram 3.0 | ~$0.06 |
No key? docs/PROMPTS.md has a template and a prompt for Grok's or ChatGPT's own chat. The app shows the same prompt, filled in, under No API key?.
docs/AI.md covers the providers, where the key is stored, how transparency is handled for models that cannot return an alpha channel, and what each error message means.
A themed set, such as 3D folders rendered with an image model, becomes a community pack in one
command. Packs live in their own repository,
folderskin-community. Check it out beside this one. folderskin-tools packs make cuts finished folders out of their magenta background
(--flat-backdrop for any other flat background, such as a pink drift or plain grey), shrinks
and compresses every picture to fit, gives the finished folders one shape, and writes
pack.json:
cargo run -p folderskin-tools -- packs make ~/Pictures/renders --dir ../folderskin-community \
--name "3D Folders" --tags 3d,glossy --author your-github-name \
--preview /tmp/3d-folders.png
cargo run -p folderskin-tools -- packs check --dir ../folderskin-community--drives makes a pack of drives instead, whose skins go on drives. render previews any
picture as the folder it makes, and guide draws the template's safe
areas for artwork that gets wrapped onto the folder. docs/PACKS.md has the
contract and how a pack is proposed, docs/SKINS.md how a picture becomes an
icon, and .claude/skills/folderskin-skins/SKILL.md
teaches Claude Code to run the whole loop, so "make a pack from these renders" is a reasonable
thing to ask.
The Rust core (crates/folderskin-core) holds the folder template as vector paths,
cover-fits your image into the back panel and the front panel,
renders the whole thing once at 2048 px with tiny-skia, and downsamples to every icon size
with Lanczos3. The webview never draws folder geometry. It shows PNGs the core rendered, so
the gallery thumbnail, the preview and the icon on disk are the same pixels on every
platform. docs/ARCHITECTURE.md has the details.
| OS | mechanism | files written inside the folder | caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| macOS | NSWorkspace.setIcon |
the invisible Icon\r file macOS maintains |
none: Finder updates immediately |
| Windows | desktop.ini + folderskin-<hash>.ico, both hidden + system, folder marked read-only and system, then Windows' own SHGetSetFolderCustomSettings so Explorer reads it again, and SHChangeNotify on the folder and its parent |
desktop.ini, folderskin-<hash>.ico |
none: the folder repaints as the apply finishes |
| Linux | .directory for KDE, plus gio set metadata::custom-icon for Nautilus, Nemo and Caja |
.directory, .folderskin.png |
some tiling and minimal file managers read neither |
A drive's own icon goes where its system keeps one: .VolumeIcon.icns at a Mac drive's root, a
setting for its letter in Windows' registry, which writes nothing to the drive, and the same files
as a folder's plus .xdg-volume-info at a Linux drive's root.
Revert removes only what FolderSkin wrote, and is safe to run twice. Cloud-synced folders (iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox) will sync the helper files to your other machines. The full picture, including reverting by hand, is in docs/PLATFORMS.md.
Free · Open source · No account · No tracking
| Platform | Package | Download |
|---|---|---|
| macOS 12 or newer · Apple silicon and Intel | universal DMG | |
| Windows 10 and 11 · x86_64 | -setup.exe or MSI |
|
| Linux · x86_64 | AppImage, DEB or RPM |  |
| Linux · ARM64 | AppImage, DEB or RPM | |
On a Mac you can also install it with Homebrew:
brew install --cask prajwal-svm/tap/folderskinThe macOS app is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other. The Windows installer isn't signed yet, so SmartScreen asks first: choose "More info", then "Run anyway". The Linux packages need glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36 and later).
Once it's installed, FolderSkin keeps itself up to date: when a new version is out it shows what changed, and Update and restart installs it. Each update is signed, and the app checks the signature before installing anything.
folderskin does what the app does from a terminal, and it's handy for batches and whole drives:
it puts pictures on folders and takes them off, paints folder art with the Local Model or your own
key, and makes packs. On a Mac or Linux:
curl -fsSL https://folderskin.app/install-cli.sh | shOr with Homebrew, on a Mac or Linux:
brew install prajwal-svm/tap/folderskin-cliOn Windows, in PowerShell:
irm https://folderskin.app/install-cli.ps1 | iexEither one checks the download against its SHA-256 and needs no admin rights. crates/folderskin-cli/README.md has things to try first and every command.
Prerequisites on every platform: Rust (rustup installs the version
rust-toolchain.toml names on first use), Node 22 or newer, and pnpm 11 (packageManager in
package.json names the exact version).
-
macOS: Xcode command line tools (
xcode-select --install). -
Windows: Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload, and the WebView2 runtime (already present on Windows 11).
-
Linux:
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget file \ libxdo-dev libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev
Then:
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev # run it
pnpm tauri build # installers land in target/release/bundle/Checks, all of which CI runs (docs/CI.md lists every job):
cargo test --workspace
pnpm test
pnpm typecheck
cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warningsBug reports and skins are both welcome. Skins go in through community packs. CONTRIBUTING.md covers the workflow and the few house rules, and SECURITY.md is how to report a vulnerability privately. Changes are recorded in CHANGELOG.md, and docs/RELEASING.md is how a release is built, signed and published.
If FolderSkin gave your folders a better look, a GitHub star helps other people find it.
FolderSkin is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0
(GPL-3.0-only): use it, study it, change it and share it. If you share a changed version, share
its source under the same licence. Releases up to 0.1.6 came out under MIT and keep it.
The FolderSkin name and logo aren't part of the licence. TRADEMARKS.md says how to use them. Skins in community packs carry their own licences, named in each pack.
Copyright 2026 FolderSkin contributors.
Security · Contributing · GPL-3.0 · Trademarks