This software may be freely distributed as long as it remains unmodified and this file is included with the software. This software is distributed as Freeware and no royalties or payments are expected for its use.
What it does
This control panel allows you to turn off the custom icons feature in System 7.0 or later. Custom icons are those icons which you paste into a file or folder's Get Info window. The control panel allows you to turn off custom icons for either all files, all folders, or all files & folders.
How to use it
Copy the Custom Icons control panel to your Control Panels folder on your startup disk and restart your Macintosh. Once loaded, open the Custom Icons control panel and you will see two sets of on/off switches: one for turning custom file icons on and off, and another for turning custom folder icons on and off.
The settings you choose will be remembered in a preference file called "Custom Icons Preferences" and will automatically be used every time you restart your Macintosh.
Caveats
Using this control panel with either file or folder custom icons disabled may cause a permanent loss of some of those icons. Because this control panel hides the existence of custom icons from the Finder and other applications, copying or changing a file can cause its custom icon to disappear even after the control panel is removed or custom icons are turned back on. The custom icon’s data is not lost however and some disk repair utilities (such as Norton Utilities) may notice the orphaned data and offer to reconnect it to the file or folder for you.
Disclaimer
I personally like custom icons but, on slow media such as a CD-ROM or network file server, the icons can be bothersome because they take so long to render. Although the control panel does not provide any means to control which volumes do or don’t display custom icons, the main purpose of this software is to prevent the displaying of these icons on slow media.
