Parallels Desktop 3.0 provides a great new feature called coherence. Since the newest release you are able to open documents from the finder directy with a parallels application. For example to open a Word 2007 docx document I can double click on it an the windows xp virtual machine starts and open the document in Word 2007.

I am very exciting about this feature with one exception. All documents linked to a virtual machine application have this white standard icon.

So I made a How To for changing this icon.

Nice to know:

1. As you maybe know every Application is a Folder (use a terminal to try it out)
   

   For Example
   ls /Applications/Preview.app/Contents

2. Every Applications has a Ressources Folder (you should have seen this folder in Preview.app/Contents). This Ressources Folder contains at least one icns-file (File which contains the icon-picture in different sizes).
3. Now every Applications has a Info.plist file too. All filetypes which this app is able to open has an entry in this file under
   <key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>

for example the filetype pdf:

<dict>
<key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
<array>
<string>pdf</string>
<string>PDF</string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
<string>pdf.icns</string>
<string>pdf.icns</string>
<key>CFBundleTypeMIMETypes</key>
<array>
<string>application/pdf</string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
<string>NSPDFPboardType</string>
<key>CFBundleTypeOSTypes</key>
<array>
<string>PDF </string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
<string>Editor</string>
<key>LSIsAppleDefaultForType</key>
<true/>
<key>LSItemContentTypes</key>
<array>
<string>com.adobe.pdf</string>
</array>
<key>NSDocumentClass</key>
<string>PVPDFDocument</string>
</dict>

As you see in line 7 and 8 there is a link to the icon file icns for this filetype. Now this is how a app defines its filetypes and icons. For my Excel 2007 in my virtual machine with windows xp you wouldn’t expect an application folder under mac os x. But there is one. In the virtual machine folder (in my case Documents>Parallels>Microsoft Windows Xp) is a folder called Windows Application. This Folder contains all windows application you ever started with Parallels. As you might think this folder containing a Ressources folder and a info.plist file too.

1. Copy an icns file (for exampel an icon file for docx) into the Ressources folder.
2. edit info.plist
3. Search for the CFBundle Type Extensions Key for the docx filetype:
<dict>
<key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
<array>
<string>docx</string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
<string>docx.icns</string>
<key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
<string>DOCX File</string>
<key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
<string>Editor</string>
</dict>
4. Change the CFBundle TypeIconFile String from my_documents.icns to docx.icns (or how you named the icns you copied into the Ressources Folder)
5. Save info.plist and in my case reboot Mac OS X (I don’t know if you have to reboot, but I saw the changes not until I rebooted.).
6. Now you can change the icon for every filetype you want. e.g. exlx