How to change the menubar icons in Radium 3

Purchased Radium 3 and hate the new menu bar icon? Me too. Would you like to change the menubar icon back to the radio from Radium 2? Me too! Welcome 🙂

I was a long-time user of Radium 2 and recently purchased the update to Radium 3 on the Mac App Store. While the functional improvements are worth the upgrade, the new icon feels like a huge step backward. It used to be a lovely radio and it’s now a chocolate heart – apparently because when you think ‘internet radio streaming for Mac’ you think of the sort of gift-box confectionary you buy your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, right? I know I do.

I can put up with the main icon because I’ll never see it (the app launches automatically at startup), but I’d love the radio back in the menu bar because it makes more sense to me. With a tiny bit of effort, and your copy of Radium 2, you can change it yourself, so I did.

Let’s fix Radium 3’s menubar icons

I happen to still have Radium 2 but some may not. I considered putting just the pertinent image files together in a zip and putting it online but I have a feeling somebody would object to that on the grounds of copyright. Technically you could drop any images in there, though.

If you do still have your copy of Radium 2, select it in the Finder, then right-click and select Open Package Contents. If you’ve never done this before, it isn’t dangerous if you follow these instructions. An application icon is just a fancy folder that ‘runs’ its contents instead of showing them to you when you double-click its icon. So long as we only touch the image files we want to change, we’ll be fine.

Open ‘Contents’, then ‘Resources’, then scroll down the list until you come to a bunch of .png files that start with ‘Radium-status’. There should be six of them, highlighted in the picture below.

Keep that window open on your desktop. Now open a new window, navigate to your copy of Radium 3 (the Magical Musical Chocolate For Your Ears) and do the same thing; right-click, Open Package Contents, click on Contents, click on Resources. Again, this isn’t dangerous if you follow these instructions, but if by some chance you do mess something else up, don’t worry! Just delete the entire Radium 3 app from your computer and re-download it from the Mac App Store for free, done!

Okay, so now scroll down the Resources list until you find a series of files that start ‘menubaricon‘, highlighted in the picture below.

What we’re going to do is copy over the relevant image files from Radium 2 and drop them into Radium 3’s Resources folder, replacing the heart icons. This means the replacement files need to be named exactly the same as the existing files.

Go back to the window with the Radium 2 Resource window. Select all six ‘Radium-status’ icons. Hold down Alt and drag those six icons to your desktop; note that a green + symbol appears next to your cursor. That means we’re duplicating the icons onto the Desktop, rather than working with the only copies we have, which will remain in the Radium 2 folder.

Once copied, select all six again, right-click and select ‘New Folder with Selection (6 items)’. Call this folder something like ‘Radium 2 icons’.

All this is just house-keeping, making sure you keep your copy of Radium 2 safe. The important stuff is next.

Now select the Radium 3 Resources window in the Finder and let’s take a look at the icons we’re about to replace. There are two ‘busy’ icons (the heart with the dot that switches sides), a ‘disabled’ version, a ‘regular’ version, a ‘pressed’ version and a ‘success’ icon which is just a checkmark.

So we need to decide which icons from Radium 2 we’re going to use to replace the Radium 3 hearts. First off, we can ignore the checkmark – just leave that as is. Next, the ‘busy’ icons; I selected the ‘Radium-status-c0’ and ‘Radium-status-c1’ icons for this – they show the radio icon with the antenna fully and partially extended.

Rename ‘Radium-status-c0.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_busy_1.tiff‘, making sure to spell it exactly right, including underscores, and when your Mac asks you if you really want to use the .tiff extension, confirm that you do.

Next, rename ‘Radium-status-c1.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_busy_2.tiff.’ And that’s the ‘busy’ icons done.

For the ‘disabled’ icon I chose the ‘inv’ version from Radium 2. So rename ‘Radium-status-inv.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_disabled.tiff‘.

Next we replace the ‘pressed’ version; this is what’s shown when you click on the menubar icon to display the drop-down interface. Radium 2 doesn’t really have an equivalent so I chose to forego the effect (it’s barely noticeable anyway) and just duplicated the standard R2 menubar icon and used that; select ‘Radium-status.png’, duplicate it with Command-D to create ‘Radium-status Copy.png‘, then rename this new file to ‘menubar_icon_pressed.tiff‘.

Now rename the original copy of ‘Radium-status.png‘ to ‘menubar_icon_normal.tiff‘.

You should now have seven icons in your ‘Radium 2 icons’ folder on your desktop, as pictured below; five renamed icons, and two leftovers that we haven’t touched.

Now to insert them into Radium 3! Bring up your Radium 3 Resources window, then select the five icons we renamed in the ‘Radium 2 icons’ folder, and drag them into the Radium 3 Resources window. You’ll be told the operation can’t be completed and asked for your Admin password. Enter that and the files will be copied. Select to ‘Replace’ each one when asked.

Now your Radium 3 Resources window should look like this (I’ve highlighted the bits you should be looking at):

Notice that where there were five variations on a heart, and a checkmark, there are now five variations on a radio, and a checkmark.

Now launch Radium 3 and hope for the best! If you see this:

… then you’re all done!

N.B.

This is a total hack. It will probably revert back to the heart icons again if you apply a future update from the Mac App Store – that’s if the MAS even recognises it as an official app now that we’ve dropped new resources into the package. But your re-icon’d copy of Radium 3 should function just fine and if you do need to revert back at any point you can simply delete the app manually and re-download for free.

Enjoy your new, old version of Radium 3!