Mac is moving my drives icons on the desktop when I put it to sleep

I'm having this issue on a brand-new Mac Studio running Ventura. So, it's not a Sonoma issue, as one commenter mentioned. It's also not related to Migration Assistant, because I did a completely clean install on this machine and did NOT migrate. I always use Snap to Grid, so for those who were using a different Finder setting, changing it *to* Snap to Grid likely won't fix it.

Just a month ago, this Mac Studio replaced a 2020 iMac that was also running Ventura, and this issue did not appear until I started using the Mac Studio. I also have a 2023 MacBook Pro, running Sonoma, that does NOT display this issue.

So, there appears to be no particular rhyme or reason—except in my case, out of three Macs, it's only happening on the Mac Studio.

To the commenter who disabled the display of external drives, it's fantastic that that works for you. But I have 5 drives, and I need to be able to see—at a glance—that they have all properly mounted. We all work differently of course.

For certain users, the keyboard shortcuts for sorting might work. They can be found in Finder > View > Sort By. (No, it shouldn't be necessary to hit a shortcut, but as a workaround until this is fixed, it's available.) Unfortunately neither of those works for me as any of the available options would change the desired order of my icons. But your needs may be different.

Apple really needs to fix this.

4k Screen is not the issue . This happens on all resolutions. I have a 5K and same results.

After some experimenting I got my drive icons to lock in place.

Move drive icons to desire location

right click on desktop and sort icons "snap to grid"

move icons again and they will stop in another location that you do not want

set icons to location: "none"

move icons to desire location

set icons to "snap to grid"

Many steps which may not be required in this order but that is working for me.

Lol that's funny.. Spend $12K on a machine you should expect and icon to stay in place not float too a new location each time you restart the thing... If a $200 Dell can accomplish this an extremely pricey system should as well.. Glad you like a clean wallpaper, others want fast access to the things they use most :( Just had to rebut this post.....

Just read something which I thought might have been here, which seems to fiy with my latest workaround, and that is on wake/boot the desktop icons are larger than you have set them for, therefore they overlap and thus move. Then maybe a split second later, the system realises you want smaller icons, so it resizes them, but now is too late as it has already moved the icons.

I have moved everything to the left side of the desktop except my 6 drives, and I have moved them further (Farther) apart than they were (bigger gap between) and touch wood, nothing has moved for a while...

Post was by Joel Pro by the way, I'll copy and paste below image.

Mac is moving my drives icons on the desktop when I put it to sleep

I have a Mac Studio with the same issue.

based on watching my boot up closely when my monitor is awake I get the feeling the Mac goes through one of two things, either a “what are your screen dimensions?” cycle where it briefly defaults first to an assumed-but incorrect- screen size than I have set for my monitor, or it defaults briefly to an assumed- but incorrect - icon size setting that is bigger than the one I’ve chosen. In other words all my icons are - for a fraction of a second - larger than I have them set - either through temporarily incorrect screen dimensions or icon size settings.

In any event the result is that the icons - briefly - no longer fit where I placed them - they’d overlap so they reorder before the system realizes “oh you set your screen dimensions to THAT size!” Or “oh your icons are set to be smaller!”

If this is true, the order of events on wake up / boot up could be causing this. I have a third party external monitor. I assume the rest of us do too. So it might be taking a bit of time to communicate with the external monitor during which the Mac makes incorrect assumptions about what it has to do. which causes the reordering.

like I say I’m probably wrong. But I’ve seen my icons be too big for a fraction of a second and they scramble to new positions and then shrink back down.

anyone else see that?

Same similar issue - brand new Mac Studio M2/Sonoma 14.1.2. and the internal (which SHOULD be in the upper RH corner of the desktop by default - a Mac standard for 40 years) - gets dumped into the lower RH corner after the Mac sleeps. Put it back - and it just does it again after sleep. Horrible.

Until I upgraded my Mac Studio to Sonoma from Ventura a few days ago, my disk icons did stay put (even the one for the Time Machine disk which only appeared after Time Machine completed its job on bootstrap). Now, with Sonoma, disk icons keep moving around the right-hand edge of my screen and I keep putting them back. Something's broken somewhere... I also have file icons overlap one another, which I had neve seen before...

But, since the upgrade my system boots much faster then before; a tradeoff I'm ready to accept.

Hey there Lewis Kopp,

That is a strange thing to occur! Let's team up to help get this resolved. We'd like to start with learning more about what's happening, along with ruling out some possible causes:

1. When did this start?
2. Sometimes unexpected behavior can be resolved with a restart. Check out the section ‘Restart your Mac' here: Shut down or restart your Mac
3. To test for this in a new user, check out the steps under 'Add account' here: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

Cheers!

I have recently started getting this with my iMac, running latest Sonoma, that's why I am here, then I thought, what was the last program I installed. Western Digital drive utility, having a spot of bother with one of my drives, and there's also an uninstall wd drive utility, so I uninstalled it, et Voila ! problem solved, for me at least...

I have a Mac Studio with the same issue.

based on watching my boot up closely when my monitor is awake I get the feeling the Mac goes through one of two things, either a “what are your screen dimensions?” cycle where it briefly defaults first to an assumed-but incorrect- screen size than I have set for my monitor, or it defaults briefly to an assumed- but incorrect - icon size setting that is bigger than the one I’ve chosen. In other words all my icons are - for a fraction of a second - larger than I have them set - either through temporarily incorrect screen dimensions or icon size settings.

In any event the result is that the icons - briefly - no longer fit where I placed them - they’d overlap so they reorder before the system realizes “oh you set your screen dimensions to THAT size!” Or “oh your icons are set to be smaller!”

If this is true, the order of events on wake up / boot up could be causing this. I have a third party external monitor. I assume the rest of us do too. So it might be taking a bit of time to communicate with the external monitor during which the Mac makes incorrect assumptions about what it has to do. which causes the reordering.

like I say I’m probably wrong. But I’ve seen my icons be too big for a fraction of a second and they scramble to new positions and then shrink back down.

anyone else see that?

Apple should fix this.

I need my desktop to behave itself and do the very simple things, like displaying my icons where I put them, far, far more than I need to be able to link widgets to my mate's phone on the fly or whatever Apple's latest 'colouring in' fetish is.

A perfect example of breaking something important in the pursuit of something utterly inconsequential.

Tried replying a couple of hours ago, no idea why it isn't showing, apologies if it appears twice. I posted my solution to this a while ago, though I can't take the credit for it. When the OS comes out of sleep or boots, for a brief moment it sees everything at default settings, my icon are smaller than the default, so seeing mine larger means they will overlap in their current position, so the OS moves them. As the waken/boot continues, it realises that you want them smaller, so it resizes them, too late came the cry, it had already moved them. The answer for me was to firstly move slightly to the left (presuming they are down the righthand side,) then move them apart vertically, giving more space around them. Problem solved for me, few months ago now. I have earlier today bunched them up again, set sleep, waken up and they moved again... Hope this helps.

Hey Lewis Kopp,

We appreciate you going through the steps provided. It's really helped. Since you created a test user account and the icons did not move locations, it sounds like there is a setting or app on the main user account that you use that could be conflicting with the icons moving. It could even be caused by a login item. Take a look at these steps to remove login items and see if it resolves the issue. Follow the steps for that here: Remove login items to resolve startup problems on your Mac - Apple Support. 

You mentioned a frustration with troubleshooting this. We can understand. If you would like, you can reach out to Apple Support if that method of support works better for you: Get Support.

Take care.