BartleyR7

Q: 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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Q: Rearranging Icons on the Desktop

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  • by vakras,

    vakras vakras Feb 11, 2011 4:01 PM in response to fdboucher
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 11, 2011 4:01 PM in response to fdboucher
    boucher - you can wonder all you like - - It is a given that someone, anyone, who defragments their entire machine and volumes would also have their permissions in order. And, since i made my volume into a contiguous block it has been unproblematic in this sense.

    This Apple OS 10.6 shortcoming is not limited to desktop icons. Copying one folder from an external drive onto the desktop to replace a folder of the same name that already exists on the desktop ALSO rearranges the contents of that folder, and sometimes, just erases the entire contents of that folder leaving nothing in it. This does not happen on the G3 which runs Jaguar, or the G4 which is on Tiger, and never did so on the Intel laptop when it was on Leopard until a few months ago.

    Maybe it's the way that the still very buggy SnowLeo which erased User Profiles when linked remotely to other computers works... Hardly the kind of OS that a professional would want to use.
  • by vakras,

    vakras vakras Feb 11, 2011 4:17 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 11, 2011 4:17 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner
    thanks Michel, my View Options were set to "none" when the desktop was rearranged again, and again ... My view settings are still set at "none".
  • by Patrick McDonald,

    Patrick McDonald Patrick McDonald Feb 28, 2011 8:48 AM in response to fdboucher
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 28, 2011 8:48 AM in response to fdboucher
    fdboucher: I do not dispute that this "solution" might have helped some people. But like I said before, it is what I tried first because it is so obvious. And it DOESN'T solve the problem, ciboire.

    Vakras is absolutely right, the problem remains UNSOLVED, and is not limited to the desktop.

    What a mess.
  • by Michel the drycleaner,

    Michel the drycleaner Michel the drycleaner May 19, 2011 7:39 AM in response to Michel the drycleaner
    Level 2 (262 points)
    May 19, 2011 7:39 AM in response to Michel the drycleaner

    Hi all.

     

    For what it's worth:  on 2011-05-17, all my desktop icons were re-arranged (in alphabetical order!) without my doing anything special.

     

    Thank goodness I had kept a snapshot of my personnalized arrangement.

     

    So the problem still lurks in there!

     

    (I'm now on OS X 10.6.7)

  • by Michel the drycleaner,

    Michel the drycleaner Michel the drycleaner May 24, 2011 6:15 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner
    Level 2 (262 points)
    May 24, 2011 6:15 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner

    Hi again.

     

    Re-arranged again today.  (I think after downloading a program from ambrosiasw.com...)

     

    Still not fixed, eh!?

  • by Patrick McDonald,

    Patrick McDonald Patrick McDonald Jun 7, 2011 6:36 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 7, 2011 6:36 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner

    Michael, you're right, 10.6.7 did not fix that nasty bug.

     

    With Lion install not requiring a reboot (so says Engadget today), I'm rather scared that the Finder will keep screwing us over.

     

    But who knows, maybe they FINALLY fixed it. That said, Snow Leopard remains a sick beast.

  • by Justin Bur,

    Justin Bur Justin Bur Jun 14, 2011 1:43 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jun 14, 2011 1:43 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner

    A question to anyone who's seen this problem:

     

    How many icons do you have on your desktop?

     

    My hypothesis is that the problem occurs when the number of icons exceeds some arbitrary limit (which I believe is about 100 icons).

  • by Patrick McDonald,

    Patrick McDonald Patrick McDonald Jun 14, 2011 2:11 PM in response to Justin Bur
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 14, 2011 2:11 PM in response to Justin Bur

    Justin,

     

    Sorry to shoot down your hypothesis. Had the same idea, since I had lots of stuff on my desktop. So I moved everything to a folder (and took a snapshot, as I;m now compelled to do for every folder arranged in icon view). Since then, I've never had more than 10 icons on the desktop (and that's counting the two internal drive icons). 

     

    Well guess what. The arbitrary re-arrangement of icons in alpha order still strikes every now and then.

     

    It's a Finder- and/or windowing subsystem-related bug, as it happens either after a restart, a logout, or a Finder crash.

     

    There's at least 3 other Mac power users in my dept (we're all molecular biologists) who are reduced to making screenshots of folder contents. All of them seasoned Mac veterans who see 10.6 as the only unworthy Mac OS iteration since System 6 (to be honest,10.0 wasn't exactly great either, but only because it felt unfinished).

  • by Patrick McDonald,

    Patrick McDonald Patrick McDonald Jun 14, 2011 2:14 PM in response to Patrick McDonald
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 14, 2011 2:14 PM in response to Patrick McDonald

    Forgot to say that I've had fewer than 10 icons on the desktop for 3 months now. Bug strikes every 3-4 restarts since then (or right after a Finder crash if system is on continuously for over a week).

  • by Michel the drycleaner,

    Michel the drycleaner Michel the drycleaner Jun 14, 2011 6:43 PM in response to Justin Bur
    Level 2 (262 points)
    Jun 14, 2011 6:43 PM in response to Justin Bur

    Hi Justin (and all the others).

     

    If I remember right, the first time this happened to me, I must have had about 50-60 icons on the desktop.

     

    The last time it happened, I had about 15.

     

    (And as soon as I get around to it, I'll finally have only one icon on the desktop;  and hope that Lion has figured out how to leave things where it finds them...)

     

    Best regards.

  • by Justin Bur,

    Justin Bur Justin Bur Jun 16, 2011 1:10 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jun 16, 2011 1:10 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner

    Thank you, Patrick and Michel, for shooting down my false hypothesis.

     

    I'm starting to get used to an alphabetical desktop... it's easier than rearranging all those icons every few weeks.

  • by Michel the drycleaner,

    Michel the drycleaner Michel the drycleaner Jul 20, 2011 1:22 PM in response to BartleyR7
    Level 2 (262 points)
    Jul 20, 2011 1:22 PM in response to BartleyR7

    Hi all.

     

    For what it's worth, I just turned the computer on and all my desktop icons have been re-arranged (in alphabetical order).  Yet I did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in my previous session.

     

    I'm now down to only 10 desktop icons, but still, it's painful to see this bug live so long with no response at all (to my knowledge) from Apple...

     

    Regards.

  • by ApMaX,

    ApMaX ApMaX Jul 24, 2011 11:54 AM in response to BartleyR7
    Level 1 (17 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 24, 2011 11:54 AM in response to BartleyR7

    Mac OS X 10.6.8 has the same bug. Why has not been fixed yet?

     

    BTW, I have never installed BlueHarvest.

     

    See also

    Desktop items get unsorted after cold boot on Snow Leopard 10.6.2

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2335032?start=30&tstart=0

     

    Apple, are you listening?

  • by Patrick McDonald,

    Patrick McDonald Patrick McDonald Aug 16, 2011 9:08 AM in response to Patrick McDonald
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 16, 2011 9:08 AM in response to Patrick McDonald

    Same sorry mess under 10.6.8. After over a month of smooth sailing, the bug struck me twice in the last 2 weeks on my main machine. Sigh. Hopefully Lion will solve it for good… whenever I find the time to migrate my various Macs (i.e. after grantwriting). Because it's clear Snow Leopard never will. No wonder it's a threatened species.

  • by WZZZ,

    WZZZ WZZZ Aug 16, 2011 10:41 AM in response to Patrick McDonald
    Level 6 (13,112 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 16, 2011 10:41 AM in response to Patrick McDonald

    >Hopefully Lion will solve it for good

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3235279?tstart=0

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