Q: Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows

Please post a link here so we can follow.

I wish I could say the same ... I tried that "solution" as I did have one folder that contained hundreds of custom icons in my dock .... unfortunately the pixelated blurry icon "creep" continues to rear its ugly head for me. But like I said before I've given up on this and will just continue to reboot my machine umpteen times a day.

To review, ( we covered this earlier in thread I believe ) I think Eric's "fix" worked for him because that was the trigger causing the problem to surface. My Theory is that there is some cache or system file issue that is triggered by any one of several things. In my case for example, I have many icons that are created by a program called ComicBookLover. I have many cbr and cbz files that are basically rar and zip archives of jpg's. One of the functions of CBL is to make the icon for each file the first image contained in the archive. If I do not open a folder containing a one of these files, I can go days without the problem surfacing ... open said folder ( especially one with lots of those files ) and within minutes the problem occurs.

I also theorize that there many who are experiencing this issue have two or more "triggers" on their system. This is why most "fixes" work temporarily for most yet "permanently" for others. Until Apple fixes the true cache or system issue the only way to get "permanent" results is to not use ANY of the triggers. Problem is that since nobody has a complete list of triggers yet, it's impossible to absolutely avoid the issue.

My occasional problem continues. The folders with hundreds of custom icons are subdivided into folders of less than 300 icon-ed folders AND are stored on an external drive, never Docked. Sometimes it's Mail, sometimes it's Thunderbird, lately sometimes it's been Adobe Reader.

I don't have to re-boot, though, because it has not caused any real interference with getting my work done.

I just accepted the 10.6.3 upgrade and will see if the occasional continues.

well, after experiencing this issue for many months, _it now seems resolved_ on my machine, as well. (knock on wood.) frankly, i'd become so jaded that i'd stopped paying attention to it. so, i can't say exactly when it stopped occurring.

one possibility was the fact that i'd recently installed 10.6.3, so i came here to see if others had observed the same.

but now, reading your account of removing, from the dock, folders containing thousands of images, it occurs to me that i recently did just that -- _purely by coincidence_. at the time, i had absolutely no idea that a connection had been made between such folders and this issue. i removed them for another reason, all together.

this is a perfect example to illustrate how important it is to not draw conclusions about cause and effect too quickly. at this point, unless we start to see posts from various users that 10.6.3 corrected the issue for them, i'm more likely to believe it was the removal of the folders that cleared it up (at least for me).

(i also agree with those who've stated that there may be multiple triggers and that on any given machine, it may be possible that any one or two of those triggers might cause the issue.)

I have also not noticed the effect since installing 10.6.3 but I don't know if that is due to a fix by Apple or the fact that I have simply done nothing to trigger it yet. Only time will tell.

assuredly 10.6.3 has/had nothing to do with fixing the problem as I still experienced it after applying the update ... not to mention the OT problems that 10.6.3 has caused with NAS via SMB ... but I digress well I tried something different yesterday that appears to be working, for the moment at least ... I got rid off MaxMenus ... for those of you unfamiliar with it its an older hierarchical menu program (similar to that of windows start menu or like the old system 9 menu that makes navigating much easier than the clunkiness known as the dock) like when placing a folder in your dock that contains custom icons MaxMenus also pulls the icons into its menus which means any time I accessed it it pulled in those thousands of custom icons.

Hopefully this solves the problem for me ... but regardless I dont think this SHOULD be a problem we should even be dealing with to begin with ... as in why can't the OS handle custom icons like it used to prior to SL? And YTF hasn't Apple even addressed this? Oh I know ... just venting again

I don't the issue is solely and simply the handling of custom icons ... it is what apps like MaxMenus and others are doing to system caches when they CREATE custom icons in SL. These various apps and other triggers may not even all be corrupting things in the same way. For all we know, Apple may indeed have made some fixes that prevent some triggers from happening and may have contacted the authors of the offending apps and we are waiting for them to fix their apps. There may be one or more new "features" of SL ( some of which may not even have been taken advantage of yet ) which may be broken if Apple totally "fixes" the issue from their end. The only thing we know for sure is that for those of us affected, it is frustrating. At least we can add MaxMenus to the list of "triggers".

I think the culprit is the Dock.
I have it on the left side, magnification on.

While I had a folder with a Custom Icon placed on the Dock the fuzzy Icons would appear.
I removed the folder and the problem disappeared.
I added the folder back and the fuzzy icons came back.
--
HTH

I just started having this issue. Changed nothing in the dock.

It first started when I downloaded the new iTunes from apples website.
I noticed it on the DMG before I installed it, and now the iTunes icon in the dock is always pixelated.
Also random other programs that I open will be, I notice them in the alt-tab dialogue box

I haven't seen any new posts in a few days, and the question is marked as "answered," however I am still getting the little fuzzy icons all over. I've cleaned every cache, removed every .plist file, deleted numerous apps, gotten rid of .DSStore files, Safe Booted, and even talked sweetly to my Mac. Sadly though, the annoyance that is pixelated previews is alive and well. I've never seen such a thing. Usually when I have a problem, I hop on these message boards, and some smart person tells me what to do. This problem however, has stumped even the brightest Mac minds. That brings me to my question: What the F should I do? I keep e-mailing Steve, and he just tells me to buy an iPad. I know I'm ranting, but being an icon maker (and web developer), this current problem is hindering my enjoyment of using my beloved Macintosh. All in all, I give up. Hopefully someone will find what is ailing our computers. Thanks for all of the help. Cheers!

_*Here is a fix_.*


Download IceClean...

http://www.macdentro.com/MacDentro/Home.html

On the taskbar, go to "Utilities".
Go down to "Rebuild Finder Menu Icons".

That should do it.

Great post Christopher. I've used IceClean before but never to try to solve this issue. As many have posted before, simply logging out and back in or simply restarting Finder often "fixes" the issue .... but for those times that does not work, IceClean is a great solution.

But, I would suspect that even IceClean is only a temporary fix and that sooner or later the issue will come back ... I don't know for sure cause I haven't tried using IceClean for this yet, but I after I play with it awhile, I'll post back.