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Level 4

1,829 points

Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows

Just upgraded my MBP (C2D, 3GB RAM) to SL, went smoothly. I'm seeing a lot of blurry icons in the Finder, though, seemingly at random. I'll open a window and about half the icons will be essentially large versions of the 16x16 icon, rather than sharp icons at the appropriate size. Changing the icon size via the new slider just enlarges the blurry icon, it doesn't increase the resolution.

It goes without saying that I'm seeing this on programs, files, and folders for which high-resolution icons is available.

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere. Is it a common problem? Surely it'll be addressed in a forthcoming update, but I wonder how rare it is. The only oddball thing about my system is that I have an older ADC-connected 23" Apple Cinema Display monitor connected to the DVI port via Apple's behemoth of a DVI->ADC adapter.

Thanks,
Eric.

MacBook Pro, 15", 2.33GHz Intel, 3GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6), 23" ACD, 1TB WD HDD

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 9:01 PM

481 replies

Sep 5, 2009 4:37 AM in response to dat2

Same issue here except the icons seem to degrade until they finally disappear the longer the system is running.

Sep 8, 2009 2:39 PM in response to Eric Westby

I'm having somewhat the same issue here. None of my system icons have been blurry, however pasting new icons on generic folders are showing up blurry. I first thought it might be a .DS_Store issue so I deleted the original DS_Store file (icons were on my desktop) and relaunched the Finder. Icon's were still blurry. I was able to get one icon to un-blur by logging out and back in again.

Quite odd.

Sep 8, 2009 8:44 PM in response to Eric Westby

My friend Christina is having this same exact problem with her MacBook upgraded from 10.5 to 10.6. I can confirm this problem happens in the dock with both custom icons, application icons, and system default icons (ie. Terminal). It appears to be random in which icon it affects. Not sure at all what is causing this so any help or further information would be appreciated. Erasing the com.apple.dock.plist file and killall Dock do not help.

mashny

Level 1

0 points

Sep 9, 2009 12:34 PM in response to Eric Westby

I'm having the same issue: Icon quality degrades at random, affecting random icons in random folders... I sometimes even get a very pixellated/blurry version of the download icon (the icon that appears in a folder and shows the blue progress bar when a file is downloading). The only thing that fixes the icons is rebooting, but then it's only a matter of time before icons start becoming pixellated/blurry again.

The problem started soon after installing Snow Leopard.

Matthew

Sep 9, 2009 3:33 PM in response to Warchild13

Same here. Click an app to open and the icon gets pixelated before my eyes. After closing and restarting, it stays the same. Taco HTML Edit icon has completely disappeared.

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 10, 2009 4:05 PM in response to Eric Westby

Hurray! The blurry and/or missing icon problem appears to be fixed in 10.6.1.

I updated two machines that had the symptom, and everything was back to normal on both. Both icons that had been consistently missing and those that were occasionally pixelated are suddenly perfect.

Hope others have the same experience. Gotta love 10.x.1 updates.

Sep 10, 2009 6:31 PM in response to Eric Westby

Unfortunately the 10.6.1 update didnt fix my blurry icons issue ... just as before random icons seem to get pixelated / blurry the longer I'm on my machine.

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 10, 2009 6:50 PM in response to Eric Westby

And sadly, three hours after I posted delightedly that it had been fixed, it's back.

Something changed, though: after 10.6.1 both my MacBook Pro and a colleague's MacBook saw crisp, full-resolution icons on programs that have been stubbornly blurry 100% of the time since 10.6.0 was first installed. But a few hours passed, and things are degrading once again. It's like a cache is getting corrupted.

So to recap, it would seem that 10.6.1 changed something. Just not permanently. Maybe it just flushed a cache. 😟

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 10, 2009 6:51 PM in response to Eric Westby

Marking this thread back as unanswered: turns out the 10.6.1 update only temporarily fixed this issue. It's as bad as ever after a few hours.

Sep 10, 2009 7:14 PM in response to Eric Westby

here's to hoping this gets addressed in 10.6.2 ... I know its probably not a big deal for most people but this has made creating custom icons a nightmare for myself. Rebooting anywhere from 10+ times a day just to refresh icons so I can see my work in non-pixelated form is getting quite tiresome.

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 10, 2009 7:22 PM in response to maulrat1967

I am frankly shocked it wasn't addressed in 10.6.1, since it's such a visible problem, and I know the Apple user experience engineers are such perfectionists. I can't believe Apple is willing to let their new OS look like this for months!

Maybe there's some factor that's causing it only to happen to a small subset of users? For example, I frequently use an ADC-connected second display hooked up to my MacBook Pro, so I thought that might have been a factor -- until I started seeing it at work, where I don't use an external display.

Sep 10, 2009 8:40 PM in response to Eric Westby

I was thinking the same thing, Eric ... but I've talked to other users with this issue and so far we don't seem to have any common denominators ... my issues seem to crop up when I start saving custom icons in Graphic Converter (6.5.1) BUT whats not related is that the program/default icons from Preview and Automator (and other apps) show up in the dock pixelated which has no relation to the icons I created in GraphicConverter ... it seems to be an icon cache problem (if I were to guess) ... at some points the finder also reboots on its own and then almost ALL my icons are pixelated until I reboot.

Oh yea, I've also had a problem with icons flat out disappearing as well.

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 10, 2009 10:11 PM in response to maulrat1967

maulrat1967 wrote:
Oh yea, I've also had a problem with icons flat out disappearing as well.

Same here.

Sep 11, 2009 1:16 PM in response to Eric Westby

I have the same problem!!! Please fix it soon apple!!

Ketan L

Level 1

4 points

Sep 11, 2009 8:53 PM in response to Eric Westby

Same here. Pixelated Safari, iTunes, iPhoto & Preview icons. Funny though but Preferences, Finder and other ones are fine.

Seems like a lot of people are having problems but no solutions yet. Does Apple even read these support postings??

Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows