I’ll just say it. I think the default set of icons provided by Emacs are embarrassingly ugly. It’s a shame because I think a well designed tool bar is a genuinely useful user interface. I also suspect that a lot of the guidance to disable the tool bar is motivated more by aesthetic than functional reasons.

Thankfully, in keeping with the deeply configurable nature of Emacs, one can substitute said icons for better looking ones. That is what Calle 24 does, a new package now available on MELPA that substitutes the default tool bar icons with those from SF Symbols, a library of images provided by Apple to support apps made to run on their platforms.

Calle 24 also provides different icon sets for both light and dark mode appearances.

If you use Emacs for macOS, I invite you to give Calle 24 a try.

emacs