This chapter starts with an overview of Icon Services and follows with a detailed description of how to use Icon Services. You should read this chapter if you are interested in using Icon Services to obtain and display icons for your application or extension. This document assumes that you are familiar with the basic concepts of icon creation and usage, as described in Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines and Inside Macintosh.
Icon Services provides icon data to multiple Mac OS clients, including the Finder, extensions and applications. Using Icon Services to obtain icon data means you can provide efficient icon caching and release memory when you don't need icon data any longer. Icon Services provides the appropriate icon for any file object (file, folder, or volume), as well as other commonly used icons such as caution, note, or help icons in alert boxes, for example. The icons provided by Icon Services support a much larger
palette of colors: up to 24 bits per pixel and an eight-bit mask. Icons are Appearance-compliant and appropriate to the active theme.
Obtaining and Using Icons With Icon Services
