As cool as stacks are for some folders, they are a real step backwards for most folders. When you add a folder to the dock, it displays nothing except a stack of documents, which are often identical to those in other dock-bound folders. Your custom icons to view your folders are gone, in favor of generic nonsense.

With any luck, Apple will pull their collective head out of their collective ass and make folders in the dock work better, but until then, you have Badge Leopard Stacks to bring back custom folder icons to your dock stacks.

This is a simple AppleScript that fits nicely on your Finder windows’ toolbar. When opened, it creates an alias of the currently open folder inside that folder and names it so that it will always be on top when sorted by name. The result of this is that when you view a folder on your dock as a “stack,” it will actually display the icon of the folder first, rather than a collection of meaningless documents.

As an added bonus, clicking on this alias will open the folder, which may make it easier to open the folder from the stack.

This doesn’t work well at all for stacks that are sorted by anything other than “name.” So it goes.