diff --git a/assets/icons/dc-appearance.svg b/assets/icons/dc-appearance.svg
index 12054b4e5..41ba9d735 100644
--- a/assets/icons/dc-appearance.svg
+++ b/assets/icons/dc-appearance.svg
@@ -1 +1 @@
-<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="1.5" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><rect x="4" y="4" width="10" height="10" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.4"/><rect x="10" y="10" width="10" height="10"/></svg>
+<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="1.5" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round"><circle cx="6" cy="7" r="2" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.45"/><path d="M10 7h10"/><circle cx="6" cy="12" r="2" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.45"/><path d="M10 12h8"/><circle cx="6" cy="17" r="2" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.45"/><path d="M10 17h11"/></svg>
diff --git a/crates/ui-egui/src/icons.rs b/crates/ui-egui/src/icons.rs
index 551aaf811..c7e275bc0 100644
--- a/crates/ui-egui/src/icons.rs
+++ b/crates/ui-egui/src/icons.rs
@@ -177,6 +177,19 @@ mod tests {
         }
     }
 
+    /// Appearance (effects) and Pathfinder both lived in the icon column; they used the same
+    /// overlapping-squares motif (storytold/vectorcraft#2681).
+    #[test]
+    fn appearance_panel_icon_is_not_the_pathfinder_icon() {
+        let appearance = String::from_utf8_lossy(include_bytes!("../../../assets/icons/dc-appearance.svg"));
+        let pathfinder = String::from_utf8_lossy(include_bytes!("../../../assets/icons/dc-pathfinder.svg"));
+        assert_ne!(appearance.as_bytes(), pathfinder.as_bytes());
+        assert!(
+            appearance.contains("<circle") && !pathfinder.contains("<circle"),
+            "appearance should read as a list, not overlapping squares"
+        );
+    }
+
     #[test]
     fn shared_catalog_preserves_fallback_and_tool_aliases() {
         let ImageSource::Bytes { uri, bytes } = source("missing-icon") else { panic!("expected SVG bytes") };