Sierra alias icon

This was great, I've been wondering about this for a while and figured it must have a cache to reset which ultimately means, "Will Google it later." I don't think I need to translate, "later" for the internet.

If I may add to this, my problem was that I have the cascading folders in my dock holding my dev tools, utilities, downloads and recent applications. Even after switching into and back out of icon view these icons didn't reset.

The fix is similar and simple and it's likely most will figure it out on their own.

Command + Option +Esc, select Finder, and click Relaunch.

I did this after I refreshed the aliases in the finder window. I'm unsure as to whether the order will matter or not.

Thanks again for your post.

Yes, there has been a change with aliases. At first all old aliases show a generic icon instead of a folder. I found that all original icons are restored if a single folder is changed from List view to Icon view and back again. Problem fixed.

I have some aliases with custom icons. They've not been affected by the change.

Also, all new aliases now are only 800 to 900 bytes instead of 1.3MB. I like that change which saves a good amount of space but, I wish there was some documentation for users.

Anyway, I'm going to delete and recreate all my aliases and save some space !

Garry

Yes, same here. After a reboot, was in List View with faulty icons which were 'fixed' by switching to icon view and back. I think that this only happens with a cold boot. I had quite a lot of restarts and log off/on with no problem I remember.

I think it's a bug which we should report either by customer feedback or a developer channel.

Cheers.

This "fix" worked to make an individual folder's alias display the correct icon, and it survived a reboot.

Do a "Get Info" on the alias, and you should see that the correct icon is displayed at the top left of the Get Info window.

Copy the icon and paste it back. When the window is closed, the correct icon should appear in the Finder window.

Once the icon has been pasted back in, the size of the alias goes from ~800k to ~1,200k.

can't figure out how to delete my post to Gerald. Ignore this..

Thanks Keith; your idea worked for me! (AND it survived the cold restart, which no other "fix" has survived)

Too much work to justify fixing the hundreds of alias's I have, but at least I can fix the annoying ones that are in my face every day.

Such good news that aliases are now only a few bytes large instead of over a megabyte!

I had structures with hundreds of small files (100-200kB) with aliases in alternative folder structures and it sucked that the aliases were way bigger than the originals! I always thought, why do all this aliases with the default icon of their filetype need their own full resolution copy of the icon in their resourcefork/metadata.

Filed this as a bug to Apple on every OS iteration. Dissappointed each time this bug was not fixed, and file size even grew more due to ever growing icon size. Glad that this has been fixed with Sierra eventually!

Thanks for the tip!

I have the same issue... Already went throught the post and tried every tips/solution here. Yet, when I paste the customized icon the size grows but no change on visual happens... So well, it's a pity....