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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

84 replies

ApMaX

Level 2

152 points

Sep 15, 2011 12:57 PM in response to mbuchichio

It does not work here. I have had the sort option to None for ages. The poblem with this bug is that it is not 100% consistent; it strikes one in five times or so.

Sep 15, 2011 1:03 PM in response to ApMaX

Agreed. There are already reports that this does not solve the bug. More compellingly, this has been filed in Apple's bug database under Bug ID# 8657884. Become a developer (it's free), and report this bug, using the ID given here. The more people do this, the more incentive for Apple engineers to solve it. Especially since the bug is also present in Lion.

Sep 15, 2011 2:39 PM in response to Patrick McDonald

The thing is, I also had the sorted option to None, BUT in the option for the Desktop viewed in the usual way, selecting the Desktop itself, but if you look at the desktop folder inside your user folder, there are options available that you don't have otherwise.

Having the sort option by default was one of them that was NOT shown in the View options as seen from the Desktop.

So far my icons had not been moved again.

Are you sure that you are viewing the View options like I said?

ApMaX

Level 2

152 points

Sep 15, 2011 3:26 PM in response to mbuchichio

In my case it was just as you indicate. It has been like that always for years. And I get rearranged Desktop icons once in every five reboots or so. Even with just three or four Desktop icons. Really frustrating.

Sep 15, 2011 3:51 PM in response to ApMaX

Too bad.

I wonder why it seem to work for me, so far at least.

And yes, I know is VERY annoying, much more due to the fact that the problem had persisted for several major Mac OS versions.

I also went back to Snow Leopard, too much anoyances like these on Lion as it is right now.

Not holding my breath on Apple fixing them though...

Best of luck, guys.

Aug 20, 2012 6:22 AM in response to BartleyR7

I've noticed that every time my icons get unsorted it is because Finder deletes the /Desktop/.DS_Store file.

It seems like Finder cannot recreate/update the .DS_Store after a while.

Anybody else noticed this?

Open Terminal and enter this command "ls -latr Desktop".

This will display all files and sort them with last created in bottom.

The .DS_Store should be in the bottom of the list and be recreated when for example a file is put on the Desktop.

Running Mac OS X 10.6.8.

DaFlu

Level 1

0 points

Feb 5, 2013 10:02 AM in response to BartleyR7

I've the same problem since 10.6.

I've reported this to apple via Bug Report on 2013-01-17 (Bug ID 13031916) - the first answer was: "We can not reproduce this, we have no other reports of this, and we are not planning any fixes in this area for Snow Leopard "

a workaround is this:

Download Desktop Icon Manager for Mac - Saves/restores icon positions on the desktop. MacUpdate.com

Running Mac OS X 10.6.8 / MacPro / 8GB

telene

Level 1

0 points

Sep 19, 2013 4:33 PM in response to BartleyR7

I have been having this issue as well.

Have tried various solutions suggested across multiple threads with this topic, and nothing worked...

I asked my programmer husband, and he asked the simple question to me:

"Have you tried using Safari?"

I'm a steadfast Chrome user, so I had not.

Opened Safari, tried dragging and dropping, and lo and behold, the behavior had reverted to dropping images where I wanted to (instead of snapping to the upper right).

So far, I have seen no one else mention their browser of choice. Just thought I would post this to see if somehow this is a Chrome issue, and not an OS X issue at all.

Any thoughts, anybody?

(FWIW, I am not switching to Safari just to drag-and-drop properly. There needs to be a solution that doesn't require me switching to what I consider an inferior browsing experience.)

Dec 2, 2014 11:38 AM in response to telene

Today I got this bug for the first time I ever had my Macbook 5.1

under 10.5 never got this bug now under 10.6.8 the first time

Rearranging Icons on the Desktop