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Eric Westby Author

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

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 11, 2009 9:08 PM in response to Ketan L

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

No: you'll want to report the problem using the form at:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Ketan L

Level 1

4 points

Sep 13, 2009 9:48 PM in response to Eric Westby

Ok. Thx. I've done that. FYI. One of my icons "magically" cleared up - all by itself.

Kayelel

Level 1

15 points

Sep 20, 2009 3:39 PM in response to Eric Westby

I had the same problem, but it suddenly disappeared after updating Little Snitch and restarting...

Sep 20, 2009 4:23 PM in response to Kayelel

Give it time, it will show up again trust me

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 20, 2009 7:13 PM in response to Dolphbucs

Dolphbucs wrote:
Give it time, it will show up again trust me

I concur. I thought 10.6.1 had fixed it, but nope, the fix only lasted through one restart.

Ketan L

Level 1

4 points

Sep 20, 2009 9:03 PM in response to Eric Westby

Yes. It's been more than a week now and all of my icons are back to normal. Quite a funny little problem though. Very frustrating to diagnose.

Sep 20, 2009 9:23 PM in response to Eric Westby

I'm having the same problem too after installing Snow Leopard. I've got CandyBar for the icons. At first I thought it must have something to do with Candybar but after I upgraded to the latest version of Candybar. The icons still appears to be blurry pixaleted at the docks and in colorflow.

Sep 21, 2009 8:45 AM in response to Ketan L

Ketan, do you use any RAR or ZIP archives or any multi-page PDF's ? Also, do you use the slider in the icon view of finder to increase the icon size? That is the catalyst I believe.

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 21, 2009 10:06 AM in response to Dolphbucs

Dolphbucs wrote:
Do you use any RAR or ZIP archives or any multi-page PDF's ? Also, do you use the slider in the icon view of finder to increase the icon size? That is the catalyst I believe.

I'm going to disagree on this -- most of us saw the problem immediately after upgrading to 10.6.0.

I for one didn't change the icon size prior to noticing the problem, and I've only resized them once or twice since then. The problem, though, has persisted through dozens of restarts on several computers running both 10.6.0 and 10.6.1.

Sep 21, 2009 11:42 AM in response to Eric Westby

I rarely see the problem on my Mac Pro with two monitors, the secondary is my ancient 23" and the primary is the Apple 30"--I have noticed the odd slowness in replacing the generic application icons with the normal icon when opening the Applications folder for the first time after a restart. Subsequent openings are fine, as is switching the view from my normal default of List to Icon. Also a newly installed program gets the generic icon for the longest time, sometimes it stays generic until after a restart. And I use the new resize slider all the time for browsing graphics files. I also have lots of folders with custom icons, many graphics files with the Photoshop custom thumbs, not to mention some graphic files where I have created a custom thumb using an Applescript, and others where I have used a new Snow Leopard Automator Service to add a thumb. I even have a few things with custom icns files. I do sometimes see blurry icons for files with custom thumbnails in CoverFlow and Icon view, where the slider is set very high, and have surmised that is because Finder can draw much larger icons for files without thumbs, since custom thumbs are smaller (as in 128 pixels). When a file has a custom thumb, Finder displays it, and that small size is scaled up, to bad effect. Simply removing the custom thumbs and letting Finder draw something instead fixes the problem. I have not tinkered with any program icons, they remain whatever they are, and aside from tardiness in drawing them, they have always displayed fine.

I don't know what the cause might be for those who are having a problem, although bad caches might indeed be a likely suspect. One thing to try is restart and hold down the Shift key to disable third party goodies (and some of Apple's as well) and flush a number of caches. Try running for awhile in Safe Mode if you can (depends on whether something you depend on requires a startup item to be loaded) and see if the problem manifests itself. Then restart normally and see how it goes. I haven't tried a Safe Boot in Snow Leopard, but I would think it ought to still work. It's worth try.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 21, 2009 11:58 AM in response to Francine Schwieder

Francine Schwieder wrote:
I do sometimes see blurry icons for files with custom thumbnails in CoverFlow and Icon view, where the slider is set very high, and have surmised that is because Finder can draw much larger icons for files without thumbs, since custom thumbs are smaller (as in 128 pixels). When a file has a custom thumb, Finder displays it, and that small size is scaled up, to bad effect. Simply removing the custom thumbs and letting Finder draw something instead fixes the problem.

Thanks for your input! Just FYI though, as you may know, the issue you describe with custom thumbs has been around since Leopard, and is unrelated to the issue described in this thread.

We've tried clearing system caches to no effect -- indeed, the problem manifested for me immediately upon launching 10.6.0 for the first time, before any SL caches had been created.

And finally, though one post in the thread mentions Candy Bar, I have never used it or any other appearance-modification extensions, nor have the majority of the people noticing the problem.

Sep 21, 2009 3:22 PM in response to Eric Westby

I find it a bit odd when i was running on Mac OS 10.5, there's no problems with the icons, not to mention that Candybar works really well. After upgrading to 10.6 icons seems funny. You'll need to restart everytime just to see that the icon display is right. I've been using Candybar for my custom icons, no problems at all till Snow Leopard.

Sep 22, 2009 1:28 PM in response to Eric Westby

Eric Westby wrote:

Dolphbucs wrote:
Do you use any RAR or ZIP archives or any multi-page PDF's ? Also, do you use the slider in the icon view of finder to increase the icon size? That is the catalyst I believe.

I'm going to disagree on this -- most of us saw the problem immediately after upgrading to 10.6.0.

I for one didn't change the icon size prior to noticing the problem, and I've only resized them once or twice since then. The problem, though, has persisted through dozens of restarts on several computers running both 10.6.0 and 10.6.1.

Well, there has to be SOME reason why Katan and others have not seen this issue while the rest of us have. That's why I posted the above ... trying to find something that would trigger the effect.

Eric Westby Author

Level 4

1,829 points

Sep 22, 2009 9:27 PM in response to Dolphbucs

Dolphbucs wrote:
Well, there has to be SOME reason why Katan and others have not seen this issue while the rest of us have. That's why I posted the above ... trying to find something that would trigger the effect.

No hard feelings -- your post was welcome.

There must be a misunderstanding though: by my read of his posts, Ketan saw the blurred icon issue just as the rest of the people posting here did. He also mentioned that it spontaneously came and went, a symptom I've noticed as well.

Sep 23, 2009 9:25 PM in response to Ketan L

Ketan L wrote:
Yes. It's been more than a week now and all of my icons are back to normal. Quite a funny little problem though. Very frustrating to diagnose.

That is the comment that caused my reply. I took this post as meaning that Ketan thinks the probelm is solved on his/her system

Edit: now I see what you mean. I mis-spoke ... should have said "aren't seeing anymore" instead of "haven't seen"

Message was edited by: Dolphbucs

Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows