The macOS Teams Identity Crisis
If your Dock looks anything like mine used to, it’s a graveyard of generic browser icons and a constant source of anxiety.
Here is the reality of modern work, especially for consultants, freelancers, or anyone dealing with external partners: Microsoft Teams is everywhere, and rarely is it just one Teams account.
At one point in my career, I was juggling active projects for four different major clients. Every morning, I faced the same digital identity crisis. Client A used Teams. Client B used Teams. Client C and D, surprisingly, also used Teams.
To do my job, I needed to be concurrently logged into four separate Microsoft tenants, monitoring chats for urgent pings across all of them simultaneously.
If you tried to do this on a Mac, you already know the struggle. It is a special kind of productivity nightmare.
The "Tenant Switcher" Shuffle
Microsoft knows people need access to multiple organizations. They built a "tenant switcher" into the native macOS app. It’s gotten faster, but it is not a solution for simultaneous work. Sometimes notifications for inactive tenants just don’t show up until you manually switch over to check.
When you need real-time responsiveness across multiple identities, the native app just doesn't cut it.
The Browser Tab Jungle
So, we turn to the alternative: browsers.
The standard advice is to open the native app for your main job, open Chrome in an Incognito window for Client B, open Firefox for Client C, and maybe Safari for Client D.
It works, technically. But your RAM vanishes, your laptop fans sound like a jet engine, and trying to find the right tab among the fifty you have open when a meeting is starting is an exercise in panic.
The Best Compromise: Safari Web Apps
Eventually, I stumbled upon the best functional workaround for macOS users: Safari Web Apps.
In Safari, you can navigate to the Teams web client, log in to a specific tenant, and then go to File > Add to Dock.
This is brilliant because it creates a standalone, sandboxed instance of Safari just for that site. It has its own window, it doesn't get lost in your browser tabs, and because it’s Safari, it’s incredibly energy-efficient on macOS. I set up four of these, one for each client. Functionally, my problem was solved.
But visually? All of them looked the same.
The "Ugly Dock" Problem
When you create a Web App in Safari, macOS tries to grab the "favicon" from the website to use as the Dock icon.
Suddenly, my sleek, organized macOS Dock looked like amateur hour. I had four identical, teams icons sitting next to each other.
Which one was Client A? Which was Client C? I’d have to hover over them and wait for the tool-tip to tell me where I was about to click. It was confusing, unprofessional, and frankly, it just bothered me every time I looked at my screen. I wanted my Dock to reflect the clients I was working with—I wanted their branding on the apps I used for their work.
The Missing Piece: Branded Icons
I had a functional setup, but I could do better. I needed a way to take those generic Safari Web Apps and give them proper, high-quality macOS app icons matching my clients' brands.
I couldn't find an easy way to do it, so I built one.
I created a simple tool designed specifically for this macOS struggle. It allows you to take any image—a client logo, a specific color-coded Teams icon, anything you want—and instantly generates a perfectly formatted macOS app icon.
Now, my workflow is seamless and clean.
- I create the Safari Web App for a client's Teams tenant.
- I grab that client’s logo.
- I drop it into my tool to create a beautiful, native-looking icon.
- I right-click the app in finder and open the information panel.
- I highlight the small icon on the top left and paste the new icon there.
My Dock is now organized by client brand. I know exactly which Teams instance I’m clicking into instantly. No more guessing, no more ugly blurry icons.
If you are struggling with the multiple-Teams shuffle and want your Mac to look as professional as the work you do, you need to fix your Dock icons.