alexzielenski/icofamily

ICOFamily is a tool for Mac developers who need to create ICO files, the icon format used primarily on Windows. If you're building a Mac app and need to export a Windows-compatible icon, the built-in Apple tools have frustrating limitations. This project handles all the technical overhead of generating a proper ICO file, including support for icon sizes that Apple's own tools can't handle. ICO files are containers that bundle multiple image sizes into a single file, so an operating system can pick the best resolution for any context. To build one correctly, you need specific file headers and formatting rules. This class takes care of that behind the scenes. You hand it the individual images you want included, tell it which sizes they represent, and it gives you back a properly formatted ICO file. It supports standard sizes like 256, 128, 48, 32, and 16 pixels, but notably also handles 64 and 24 pixel sizes, which Apple's Core Foundation tools leave out. You can also feed it custom sizes up to 256 pixels. The people who would find this useful are Mac developers shipping cross-platform software or tools that generate Windows-compatible assets. For example, if you're building a Mac application that exports app icons for Windows distributions, or a design utility that outputs favicon files for websites, this solves a real gap in Apple's existing frameworks. The project is written in Objective-C and is straightforward to use within a Mac codebase. The creator simply asks for credit in your app's About page if you use the code. Beyond that, it's open source under the MIT license, making it easy to drop into commercial or personal projects without much friction.