How to fix gray squircle icons on macOS Tahoe

Since macOS 26 Tahoe, every app icon has to be a rounded square. Icons that aren't get shrunk and placed on a gray squircle background, which is why half your Dock suddenly looks like it's inside little gray boxes.

Why it happens

Tahoe's Liquid Glass design wants every icon to share one shape so it can render its Clear, Tinted and Dark modes. Apps that ship an older, non-conforming icon don't get rejected; macOS just shrinks the artwork and puts it on a gray tile. The app maker has to ship a new icon to fix it properly, and many haven't.

The fix

A custom icon (the kind you set with Get Info) is not forced into the squircle. So the trick is to reapply the app's own original icon as a custom icon. You can do that by hand for each app, or in one click:

1. Install Iconic and open it.
2. Right-click the app with the gray tile in the sidebar.
3. Choose Escape Squircle Jail. Iconic takes the app's bundled icon and reapplies it as a custom icon.
4. Or fix everything: in the ⋯ toolbar menu choose Escape Squircle Jail (All Apps). It skips apps that already have custom icons.

The trade-off

Custom icons are static. They don't follow Tahoe's Clear, Tinted or Dark icon modes; that's a macOS limitation, not an Iconic one. If you'd rather have a new look than the old icon, the catalog has 30,000 icons and many are made for Tahoe (look for "Liquid Glass" and "macOS 26" variants).

Doing it by hand

Right-click the app in Finder → Show Package Contents → Contents → Resources, find the .icns file, open it in Preview, copy it, then paste it onto the app's icon in Get Info (⌘I). Repeat for each app, and again after every update. Full Get Info guide.