"Beautifying" an OS X disk image

Question

When I downloaded Skype, I noticed that, in place of a normal "disk image" icon, there was a custom icon, and when I double clicked on the icon, the window used a colorful image as the background, prompting me to drag the skype icon into the applications folder.

How can I do that with my applications?

Thanks, Jason

Answer 1

Let me add to the other answers jwz's howto on setting view options on .dmg files. This is the simplest one that I got to work with no problems.

Also, to change the icon from the default .dmg icon:

• In the Finder, open an inspector window (^I) for the file whose icon you want to use, click on the icon at the top (it will get a blue border) and copy it to the clipboard (^C).

• Then open another inspector for your .dmg, click on the icon and press ^V to paste

(you can change the icon for any file like this).

For this kind of thing, you can always look at open-source programs and see what they do to get a similar result. For example here are the relevant source files for building pretty dmg files in:

• Adium
• Miro

Answer 2

If you’re interested in a commercial solution, there are a number of DMG designer apps available, including the following I gleaned from a MacUpdate search:

• DMG Packager
• DMG Architect
• DMG Canvas