MacTahoe is a macOS-style icon theme for Linux, installed by a shell script with colour variants

What the project is

MacTahoe is a macOS Tahoe like icon theme for Linux desktops, and the repository is a shell script, a set of image assets and a few directories of variants.

The theme itself is the product. There is a logo.png and preview.png, two screenshots, and then the directories that hold the actual work: src/, templates/, colors/, bold/, bolder/, links/, cursors/ and release/.

The structure suggests how it is built. templates/ is presumably the unmodified artwork, colors/ holds the per-colour variants, bold/ and bolder/ are the two sizes of panel icon, src/ is the working source and links/ the symlinks that place icons where the desktop expects them. The release/ directory holds packaged output.

The GitHub topics say android, and the primary language of the repository is recorded as Shell, which fits a project whose only code is an installer.

The licence is GPL-3.0 with the COPYING file at the root, and the project credits an AUTHORS file. The releases are dated rather than numbered, with the listed ones being 2026-09-10, 2026-07-07 and 2025-10-16, and the last push was on 2026-09-10.

The README also asks for donations, with a PayPal link, and shows three preview images so you can see the theme before installing it.

Installing it, and the options the script exposes

Installation is one script, run from a checkout of the repository.

Usage is `./install.sh` with a set of options, and the script prints its own help with `./install.sh --help`.

The options are given as a table in the README, and they cover the things you would otherwise have to guess at.

`-d, --dest` specifies the theme destination directory, defaulting to `$HOME/.local/share/icons`.

`-n, --name` specifies the theme name, defaulting to MacTahoe. That is what you would change if you want the theme installed alongside another MacTahoe variant rather than overwriting it.

`-t, --theme` specifies the theme colour variant, with the choices default, purple, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, grey and all, and the default colour being blue.

`-b, --bold` installs the bold panel icons version.

`-r`, `--remove`, `-u` and `--uninstall` uninstall, that is remove, the icon themes.

`-h, --help` shows the help.

So the default invocation installs a blue MacTahoe into the per-user icons directory under its own name. The `all` option for the colour variant is the one to look at if you want every variant installed at once, and the four aliases for the remove option are a small convenience for people who type different words.

The fact that the destination defaults to a path under your home directory rather than a system path tells you the script is designed to run as a normal user. You are not installing into `/usr/share/icons` by default, so you do not need root, and removing the theme is a matter of deleting a directory you own.

Bold icons, and why they matter on a 4k display

The README calls out the bold variant specifically, and the reason is a display density issue rather than a taste one.

The bold version is recommended for use with a High resolution display like a 4k display with a 200% scale factor.

The problem is that the macOS Tahoe icon set was drawn for the pixel densities Apple ships, and a Linux desktop running at 200% scaling on a 4k panel renders those same bitmaps at a larger logical size than they were designed for. The result is icons that look thin and slightly out of place next to the native Linux icons around them, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a theme read as a cross-platform imitation rather than a native one.

The bold/ and bolder/ directories in the repository are the two panel icon sizes, and the install script's --bold flag selects between them.

That flag only affects the panel icons. The README's wording is specific, install bold panel icons version, which is a narrower claim than a bold theme throughout. If you are on a 4k panel at 200%, the flag is worth using; if you are on a 1080p laptop, the default is probably fine and you can skip it.

Snaps need a manual step, because they ignore your icon theme

There is one gotcha in the README that will save you an afternoon, and it concerns snaps rather than the theme itself.

The note for snaps says that to use these icons with snaps, the best way is to make a copy of the application's .desktop file located in `/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/name-of-the-snap-application.desktop` into `$HOME/.local/share/applications/`. Then use any text editor and change the `Icon=` to `Icon=name-of-the-icon.svg`.

The reason is that a snap's desktop entry is packaged and signed, so it points at an icon inside the snap's own resources rather than at one on the system, and your icon theme never gets consulted. Copying the file into your own applications directory and editing the Icon line gives you a local override that takes precedence.

This is a per-application task. There is no script for it in this repository, because each snap has its own desktop file name and its own icon name, so the override has to be written per app.

The name you point at is the file name of the icon in the theme, with the .svg extension, which is why the instruction says name-of-the-icon.svg rather than a theme name. That is a little tedious to get right and it is the sort of detail that gets skipped, which is why it is in the README in a block quote.

It is part of a set, not a whole desktop

The recommendations section is short and it makes the scope obvious.

This icon theme works well with a GTK theme, MacTahoe-gtk-theme, and with a cursor theme, MacTahoe-cursor-theme, which lives in the cursors/ directory of this repository.

So the project is one third of a desktop look, and the other two thirds are separate things. The cursor theme is already here, the GTK theme is at a different repository under the same author.

That is worth understanding before you install, because the icon theme alone will not make a Linux desktop look like macOS. Window decorations, panel styling, menu rendering and the overall GTK theme decide most of what a user perceives as the desktop style, and the icons are the part that is most obviously a set of individual images.

It is a coherent set rather than a scattered one, and the fact that the same author maintains the GTK theme, the cursor theme and the icon theme is what makes the combination worth trying. The alternative is the general Linux icon themes, which are designed for Linux desktops and look native, and which win on integration with the panel, the file manager and the settings application.

The donation request at the top of the README is also a signal about the shape of the project. This is one maintainer producing artwork for other people's desktops, and the funds go toward producing more of it.

Where MacTahoe is the wrong choice

Four cases argue against it.

The first is if you want a native Linux desktop. A macOS imitation is a deliberate mismatch with the platform it runs on, and the mismatch shows in the places the theme cannot reach, in the panel behaviour, the file manager chrome, the settings application, the notification style. If the goal is a Linux desktop that looks like Linux, this is the wrong direction.

The second is if you use a lot of snaps and do not want to hand-edit desktop files. The snap workaround is per application, and on a machine with dozens of snapped applications that is an afternoon of work repeated every time a snap updates.

The third is if you need a theme that covers your applications. An icon theme only covers icons. Programs that draw their own interface, anything built on Electron with bundled assets, and games with embedded artwork will not match whatever you install here.

The alternative in the same direction is one of the established Linux icon themes, which are designed for the platform, cover more applications, and are maintained by communities rather than one person. The difference in approach is that MacTahoe optimises for a specific look, one that most Linux users recognise immediately, while the Linux-native themes optimise for coherence with the rest of the desktop and with the icon theme conventions the panel and file manager expect. If you want the Apple look and accept the seams, this is the project for it. If you want your Linux desktop to feel finished, a native theme with a good GTK theme behind it will look better.

Editorial conclusion

MacTahoe fits a Linux desktop user who wants the macOS Tahoe appearance and accepts a theme that imitates another platform's design, since the install script handles the destination directory, the colour variants and the bold panel icons in one command. It does not fit someone who wants a coherent set of applications rather than icons alone, since the GTK and cursor themes are separate projects you have to install as well. Run `./install.sh --help` first, pick a colour with the --theme option, and copy the snap desktop files into `$HOME/.local/share/applications/` if you use snaps, because the packaged desktop entries ignore your icon theme by default.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: GPL-3.0
3. README
4. Releases
5. vinceliuice/MacTahoe-icon-theme on GitHub