Stage Manager app icon in Xcode 26 macOS apps

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Adding icons to Xcode macOS apps using Icon Composer is easy, the icon shows up in the Dock and in the About dialog right away.

Yet, after many years struggling with other ways to add icons, I was hoping the new method in macOS 26 and Xcode 26 would finally make the icons show up in Stage Manager as well. Alas, nothing I tried, including killing a lot of things, rebooting while holding my tongue at the right angle, etc, did not help.

I do have some new macOS Xcode project apps that show the icon properly in Icon Manager, generated with Icon Composer, yet other apps never show their icon in Icon Composer, no matter what voodoo I try.

Forums online yield no solutions to this common problem.

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new_vsilves OP

3h

Replying to my own post here. After further testing here is what I found to work on Xcode 26 with a macOS app project:

Create a brand new project name/app.
Add desired custom AppIcon.icon from Icon Composer to the Project/Target (pick well you won't be able to change it later)
Peform the first compile/build/run of the app ever.
Paradoxically, the custom icon will show in Stage Manager but not in the Dock or app switcher (Ctrl+Tab).
Select “Include all app icon assets” in the project/target settings and Clean Build Folder/ReBuild/Run/Quit.
Unset the “Include all app icon assets” and again Clean/Build/Run.
The custom icon should now show in Stage Manager, Dock, and App Switcher.

If you replace the AppIcon.icon file in the project it will show in Dock and App Switcher but not in Stage Manager. Further, replacing back the original custom AppIcon.icon in the project will not bring back the custom icon to Stage Manager, only to Dock and App Switcher, with just a generic blank icon in Stage Manger.

Clearly, deleting whatever icon cache Stage Manger keeps is necessary for force seeing new icons but I refuse to do that. This is definition of a system (Stage Manager only) that is broken-by-design.

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