I know quite a few of you MacStories readers are die hard icon fanatics. The Mac community is full of young and vibrant designers willing to get down and dirty with Photoshop, and entire communities are built around various Mac themes, icon sets, and related design mischief. Though after folders and folders of icons, you might be wondering if there’s a better way to organize your collection of icons. Today, I’d like to introduce you to IconBox, a full featured icon library for your Mac. If you haven’t heard about IconBox and their latest 2.0 release, or you’re on the fence about an application like this, I think you’ll enjoy this review.

I really like IconBox. It’s akin to what LittleSnapper did for me for Flickr photos; IconBox is a library chock-full of considerate features that helps me organize interesting findings. While it may look intimidating at first glance due to its large feature set, there’s nothing to be afraid of. IconBox provides icon lovers new and old with a great toolset that’s persuaded me to use it over Panic’s own Candy Bar 3 (the choice was simply a matter of preference).

IconBox opens into My Box, which acts as an Inbox for all the Boxes, Smart Boxes, and Groups. For everything you import and download into IconBox, it will always be available here. Along the right sidebar, various Boxes help you filter the icons you see, allowing for easy organization and quick reference to recent items and all things trashed (which is treated and emptied like iPhoto). A slider at the bottom of the screen allows you to alter the size of the icons as you see fit.

Along the top of the application, we have various icons depicting places where you can edit app icons. The four “locations” as I call them, are destinations for your Boxes, system & application icons, resources icons (x-ray) for individual apps, and a download center for finding new icons. Also available is a search bar allows you to search for icons as you browse through the app, its search location dictated by what box or icons you’re currently looking at. On the right you can get various meta-information about the icon you’re looking at.

As you navigate through IconBox, your Boxes will usually be available via a slidable tray underneath target icons. This allows for easy drag-and-drop changes which are verified via an apply button. Any time I made a change, it immediately took effect after I accepted a prompt that would warn me about potential changes such as, “We’re restarting your dock, are you okay with that?” System icons, application icons, and even the dock are freely available to alter. If you want to revert to the defaults, a quick button will remove any changes you’ve made to the system. For added safety, make sure to backup your machine before making any changes.

Some other nifty tools can allow icon ‘manufacturers’ to get a glimpse of application resources. While I haven’t found a way to change these resources inside the app, the convenience of being able to view these sets quickly with an export option should appeal to photoshop geeks who can manually import the bundled files into an app later.

Though, what if you don’t have any icons to start with? IconBox gives you a convenient way to browse for new icons, including an “Icon of the Day,” links to popular icon websites, and a really useful tool that allows you to search through IconFinder and download icons in-app.

Though IconBox is great, there is one potent flaw to be aware of which I’m sure can be fixed in a later update. You’re encouraged to drag and drop icons into IconBox via background messages and reminders. However, this doesn’t always work. Folder icons and iContainers (from the Iconfactory for example) can’t easily be imported – instead IconBox will take the generic icon of the type of file type you’re applying. ICNS and PNG files are drag and drop-able fortunately, and those other pesky icons and iContainers can be imported via the menubar manually. I would like to be able to drag and drop anything into IconBox and have it magically work though.

The sum of IconBox’s excellent features makes it a great client. I especially enjoy the ability to easily organize my findings, reset to the defaults, and search for new icons in-app. You should at least try the trial, and for $24.99, IconBox finally gives you a useful place to store the dozens of icons you import daily.

Update: The developer emailed me with this reply on what’s supposed to happen. Maybe I discovered a bug. “One thing i would like to mention is the importing of iContainers, dragging into the main window imports the icons within and if you drag an iContainer to the left pane where the Boxes are, it imports the iContainer and creates a Box with the name of the iContainer as it’s title.”