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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

Jul 25, 2013 2:50 PM in response to ApMaX

Don't hold your breath. They haven't fixed it since it first started happening in 10.6.0 and the response I got to the bug report said it would NOT be fixed in 10.6.x.

Jul 25, 2013 8:10 PM in response to Notary Sojak

10.9 fixes the issue.

ApMaX

Level 2

154 points

Jul 25, 2013 10:22 PM in response to darthmoridin

Have you tested it with the same Mac or with a new one?

I ask that because I guess that this issue depends on the specific Mac hardware, and in particular the graphic chip. In my case, I did not have such issue with Mac OS X 10.6.7 and earlier (older Macs since 1989; about 1,000 Macs or so in total), but I have it with new Macs, as indicated above.

Jul 25, 2013 10:26 PM in response to ApMaX

I applied Mavericks as an upgrade on an iMac (late 2009) that had had the problem even after a total re-format, clean install of Lion and/or Mountain Lion. I agree that it's limited to certain hardware.

My other Macs both have been upgraded to ML, and have never had an issue. They are a 2012 Mac Book Pro and late 2010 Mac Book Air.

Aug 7, 2013 12:51 AM in response to Eric Westby

As stated on https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=159334, you should execute the following command in a Terminal and then just log out and log back in, it will do the trick.

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.fram ework/Support/lsregister -kill

Please note that if many users are logged into the system, you may have to log out all of them beforehand to get results. It works for me with 10.8.4...

HTH

Mikael

ApMaX

Level 2

154 points

Aug 7, 2013 2:27 AM in response to Mikaël Barbero

Thanks, but in my case it did not fix the issue on Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), Booting from internal Fusion Drive.

I believe it depends on the graphic chip of the Mac, because in two other iMacs never arose.

Aug 7, 2013 2:49 AM in response to ApMaX

It's a pity it did not worked for your case.

Did you tried to restart after executing the command instead of logging out and back in?

There may be more than one issue that cause the blurry icons. In my case, it was after an self-update of an app. (Chrome, Adium...). Only the updated application had the blurry icon. I can ensure that the lsregister -kill command + logging out worked well when I was the only user logged into my system.

ApMaX

Level 2

154 points

Aug 7, 2013 3:35 AM in response to Mikaël Barbero

Yes. There is only one user, which is the Admin. The issue arose after installing OS X 10.8.3 on a brand new Mac mini. No issues on other brand new iMacs, so I guess it is hardware-related.

pjslover

Level 1

4 points

Aug 10, 2013 1:42 AM in response to Mikaël Barbero

Absolutley worked for me, thanks to all.

Aug 11, 2013 2:08 PM in response to Mikaël Barbero

I posted earlier, on February 4, 2013, in response to Demjan's May 2012 recommendation about deleting the "thumbnails.data" file, shutting down and restarting, but Mikaël Barbero's 8/7/2013 post fixed the problem faster and easier. Will see if it sticks.

Thanks, Mikaël Barbero.