Rearranging Icons on the Desktop

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Level 1

5 points

Rearranging Icons on the Desktop

Hello everyone. I had this problem before 10.6, but it's only been occurring the past few days. I have my icons arranged a certain way, and whenever I restart, shutdown, or simply logout/login, my icons are completely rearranged. I have my dock on the right-hand side of my screen, and the icons (with the exception of the Macintosh HD icon) get pushed to the far right. Some pictures of the before and after are linked below.

Before: http://www.bartleyrichardson.com/public_img/icon-before.jpg
After: http://www.bartleyrichardson.com/public_img/icon-after.jpg

I have tried the following:
- Deleted the desktop.plist file from /Users/<me>/Library/Preferences/
- Attempted to change the size (both icons and grid)
- Tried to move the icons to another place on the desktop far away from the dock
- Made the dock occupy the full vertical space on the right-hand side
- Made the dock as small as possible

None of the above options made any difference. The one thing that did work was to move the dock back down to the bottom of the screen. Then my icons stayed in their proper arrangement.

I've also tried all of the combinations under "View Options" for my icons. This includes arranging by name, last modified, aligning to grid, and no arrangement at all. None of these seem to make any difference. As you can probably tell by the pictures, my icons seem to be arranged in alpha/numeric order upon restart/login (no matter what I've told Finder to do).

This started happening after the last 10.5 update (10.5.8). It persists under 10.6. I'd be extremely grateful for any help!

MacBook Pro 15" unibody (early 2009), Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 3:36 PM

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Answer 1

A A P L

Level 7

21,764 points

Aug 28, 2009 3:41 PM in response to BartleyR7

Delete the file (in the same place)
com.apple.finder.plist.
Logout/in.
Set them the way you want them.
*Note: Other Finder pref's will reset.

Scott

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Answer 2

BartleyR7 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 28, 2009 7:41 PM in response to A A P L

Scott,

Thanks for the quick reply. I did as you suggested, and (of course) all of my Finder preferences reset (including the dock placement). I went about changing everything back to how I like it, and it was fine for the initial logout/login. After that, it keeps rearranging the icons on my desktop. Now when I log back in (in any fashion), the icons are in alphabetical order - even if I have "none", "size", "kind", or any of the other options selected from the "View Options" menu. It seems, to me, like the icons are being arranged in alphabetical order before OS X puts the dock on the right-hand side. Then, when the dock is placed there, it overlays the icons. I'm just assuming this is the case, since I see the icons appear before the dock.

Is there anything else you might recommend? I don't understand why it was working just fine then, all of a sudden, it is doing this. I didn't install any additional software or software updates, and this preceded my 10.6 install.

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Answer 3

A A P L

Level 7

21,764 points

Aug 28, 2009 7:46 PM in response to BartleyR7

Are you sure you're not setting the view for a Window and not the Desktop?
Close all Finder windows.
Now, select Command-J and make sure it's set the way you wish.
Logout/in.

Scott

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Answer 4

BartleyR7 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 28, 2009 7:52 PM in response to A A P L

Scott,

Yep. Just to double-check, I did as you suggested. I'm making changes in the "View Options" window (Grab won't let me take a screenshot of it). The title of the window is "Desktop." The window also allows me to change things like icon size, grid spacing, and text size. It is driving me crazy! The changes take effect just fine. It's the post login that always is messed up.

I did manage to get it to log back in and have the icons arranged, but this only works when I have them set to arrange by name. The desktop icons pop-up to the very far right (see my second screenshot). Then, when the dock appears a split second later, the row of icons "jump" over to the left (to clear the dock). This only happens when I have them set to auto arrange by name. If I have it set to "align to grid" (which is what I prefer, so I can arrange them as I see fit), the "Macintosh HD" is in the right spot, but the other icons never get that "jump;" they stay partially obfuscated by the dock.

I do appreciate all of your help and tips thus far.

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Answer 5

BartleyR7 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 29, 2009 7:10 AM in response to BartleyR7

I decided to do a fresh install of 10.6 to fix the problem. It probably wouldn't annoy some (most?) people, but it was frustrating me to no end. On a positive note, the install went smoothly and everything is up-and-running exactly as before (but without the odd icon problem). I'm fairly confident it was an issue in some settings file (maybe another plist file) that was causing my icons to automatically arrange by name on the desktop. What was even more odd was that, towards the end, it would only do the rearrangement every 3-4 times I restarted. The other times my icons would be right where I put them. I changed nothing; I just logged in, looked at the icons, the logged out.

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Answer 6

A A P L

Level 7

21,764 points

Aug 29, 2009 9:19 AM in response to BartleyR7

Sorry it came to that, but as you discovered, sometimes it's best to "nuke and pave" to get rid of things that may have carried-over from years of use.
Glad you're working now - sometimes it's an easy fix, sometimes not.
BUT - the experience you gain from doing this makes your knowledge stronger and you become a better user for it.
Enjoy!

Scott

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Answer 7

BartleyR7 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 29, 2009 12:38 PM in response to A A P L

Definitely true. I'd only had this machine since March of this year (2009), so I was hoping to do an in-place upgrade. Alas, that was not to be.

I will say that fresh installations have become so much easier than they used to be. Sure, they take a little longer, but at least I don't have to make copies of my CONFIG.SYS or, even worse, HIMEM.SYS files so I can recreate them when I load DOS 6.22 back on a PC. I didn't have much experience with the Mac OS before v8 (Classic), so I can't really speak to their historical installation procedures. I do have to give Apple a lot of credit with 10.6; the installation was flawless, extremely fast, and well-documented. Now if I could only convince them that I don't speak 15 languages and have a need for all of those language translations. 🙂 At least they're easier to uncheck these days!

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Answer 8

mwdiers

Level 1

10 points

Aug 29, 2009 2:37 PM in response to BartleyR7

I did not have the problem described in this topic before upgrading to Snow Leopard. After upgrading, I had it all the time.

The culprit in my case was BlueHarvest. The latest version is Snow Leopard savvy, however, it defaults to nonsensical settings for the .DS_Stores file.

To fix, launch open the BlueHarvest preference pane. In the DS_Stores tab, uncheck "Startup Disk" and "File Servers".

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Answer 9

BartleyR7 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 29, 2009 2:46 PM in response to mwdiers

@mwdiers: That's a good point. I thought about BlueHarvest, so I stopped it. I guess I neglected to look at those check boxes. Like you said, I don't remember "File Servers" being checked by default in previous versions.

I also thought it might be Dropbox (although I don't know why), since the latest version is not 100% Snow Leopard friendly. It wasn't.

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Answer 10

Aug 30, 2009 11:41 AM in response to mwdiers

Thank you thank you! I actually had this problem occurring a few days ago in Leopard, prior to upgrading to Snow Leopard on Friday. It never occurred to me to check my settings in BlueHarvest after updating to the SL-compatible version (which I did before the SL upgrade itself). I should have realized what was happening when I used TinkerTool to view the invisible files, thinking maybe it was a bad DS_Store file... the file kept appearing & disappearing, because BlueHarvest kept deleting it!

Kudos, another maddening bug squashed. 🙂

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Answer 11

Sep 6, 2009 11:41 AM in response to J.R. Bookwalter

Hello

I also use a special way of arranging icons within a binder to organize my work (like one would spread papers over a large table in a meaningful manner).

I have just upgraded to 10.6 and encountered the sale issue: "auto-Rearranging icons" when logging out and in again

Using spotlight to seek for a "organized backed version of this bonder" i have figured out it is definitely a bug :
the disorganized window looks well organized in a past state within time machine...for two seconds, before you see icons messing around "live" and back to the disorganized way.

It's like no back up is any way out from this....no presentation optio has been any solution so far.

I'm currenty copying my work to an external drive with a view to copying back to my mac, hoping this will tell the finder to stop messing around..;
I'lle let you know....

Still...HELP ! IS ANYONE FROM APPLE WILLING TO HELP US SOLVE WHAT BRINGS MAC OS (THE FIRST OBJECT ORIENTED USER INTERFACE IN IT HISTORY)... BACK TO STONE AGE ???

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Answer 12

Sep 8, 2009 10:46 AM in response to Martin Jean-Marie

hello again

It seems i found a trick that might help:

if in the presentation options of the windows (ctrl j) you set de default presentation "by list" rather than "by icon", then when arranging the icons in a "by icon" presentation, this arranement will last and not be changed randmly: loging out and in again, openning the window which will show up by default in a list presentation, manually switching to presentatiàon by icon, you might get back every icon as you organised them previously....

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Answer 13

Sep 21, 2009 9:03 AM in response to Martin Jean-Marie

{quote:title=jmm-frency wrote:}I have just upgraded to 10.6 and encountered the sale issue: "auto-Rearranging icons" when logging out and in again{quote}

I had the same problem since I did upgrade to Snow Leopard. Same problem, even with a clean install of 10.6.1 on a blank disk.

Here is how I did fix that issue.

Finder - View - Show View Options - Arrange by: (select "snap to grid")

Otherwise, it seems like the problem is related to the "Grid Spacing" adjustment feature, but selecting "snap to grid" as a preference for the desktop should fix everything.

P-

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Answer 14

Oct 19, 2009 2:23 AM in response to Pascal Beausoleil

I also have the same problem. None of the above works for me. I have no special software installed.

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Answer 15

Mor-san

Level 1

5 points

Oct 22, 2009 12:10 AM in response to BartleyR7

Hi all,
I have the same, very annoying, problem. I tried snapping the icons to the grid but after a couple of days it goes bananas again and all icons end up on the right hand side, in alphabetical order from right bottom and to the left... I have my Dock on the left hand side, will try putting it bac to the bottom again. No particular apps as I'm not a pro user... ; - )

Mor-san

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