xmp files Question

It’s because of the application that’s currently associated with that filename extension in macOS. The icon doesn’t show the text in the file, what you’re seeing is the default icon for files associated with the Apple TextEdit application, and the XMP file might have gotten associated with TextEdit because an XMP file is just text. In other words, you can use an text editor such as Apple TextEdit to hand-edit XMP metadata files.

The default icon for generic text files associated with TextEdit has changed over the years. Recently, Apple changed it to include the specific words you see in the enlarged icon. This was a very conscious choice by Apple, because those words are part of a famous speech once given by Steve Jobs. For more details about that, read this article:

A Famous Steve Jobs Speech Is Hidden on Your Mac

The icon would look different if the XMP filename extension was associated with a different application. For example, if you change the default application for text files so that the default editor for all text files is Microsoft Word, an XMP icon would look like the Word icon for plain text files. If you change it to BBEdit (code editor), an XMP icon would look like the BBEdit icon for plain text files.

I have included a larger screen shot as the wording is not clear in the first post