Mac: how to change the icons for a particular extension?

Factual Questions
1

I hate the generic blank icon that gets slapped on .srt files, for instance. (subtitle files) There is no associated application, but VLC understands and uses them and I use VLC for most of my watching. I don’t want to “open with…” VLC because then they will have the VLC icon, and I want that to visually tell me that it is actually a movie. I want the subtitle file to look different, but not like nothing. (On my system, the kind of file it is listed as is simply “data”.)

I have this issue with a number of file types. I thought Candybar might be the answer, but it won’t work with Yosemite, not for system or app icons, just direct icon changes.

And obviously I don’t want to manually change each icon for each file, which of course I am capable of doing. (Perhaps an Applescript? Damn I wish I could script…)

2

If the Mac knows that VLC will open the file, it will ask VLC to provide the icon. Mac OSX allows applications to open different file types, and for each one it can present a different icon.

VLC already has an icon type for subtiles, and it has an entry in its Info.plist for .srt suffixes, so - if you tell the Mac to use VLC it should actually do what you want.

At least the installation of VLC on my Mac has this. It should “just work”.

3

Here’s a way to do what you want even if VLC doesn’t have the appropriate icon (but I bet it does).

SuperUser set an icon.

Basically, you associate it with a program, then go into the program package and set the icon to what you want.