Q: Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows

Lion is going to have a different major interface we will be living in ( Mission Control ) even thogh the basic same structure will be there. One can only hope this issue will be solved by then and we'll just have to deal with incompatability issues with older software.

Add me to this list. I started noticing it a couple of weeks ago at random. What's up with this? I've not seen it before on OS X.

For a discussion that's been going for almost a year now, I'm surprised no one has mentioned that if you close the app, remove the icon from the task bar, open the app and select keep in dock the issue is resolved.

It's not just dock icons; it's throughout the entire Finder. Unfortunately, your workaround doesn't address the main issue, which has still not been resolved in 10.6.8.

The icon blurring issue isn't just localized to the Finder. CandyBar, an application that keeps and indexes user created icons, also shows icons that should be 512x512 at no better than 32x32.

Other applications that open files also show blurry icons in the standard file open dialogs and standard file save dialogs.

Icons inside DMG files also show blury icons. This could be because DMG's are just another file type for the FInder to display, but I thought it would be worth mentioning.

I'm planning on reinstalling Snow Leopard next week (when I get back from vacation) so that I'll be ready for Lion when it comes out (possibly the 14th?). I've been having so many issues with my computer and beach ball delays, HDD's that seem to work forever and other issues including the blurry icons. I'm hoping that a clean install will eliminate the issues.

I'll post my findings when I am finished.

VesperDEM & coltraning, sorry about that. After years of using SL, I've only had the problem once, two nights ago.  What I did immediately solved the problem.  Had no idea the issue was so pervasive.

HR, no problem. I was just wanting to make sure that everyone was aware that this problem is not located specifically to the Finder or the Dock, but the OS itself.

If you just started seeing it for the first time a couple of nights ago, it's fair to say that you will start to see this happen to you with gaps of the icons looking fine for a period of time then the bluring will occur again, etc...

I just rebooted my system and my icons look perfect again. That will last for about a day before the blurring occurs again and will get worse and worse before I reboot again.

I'm hoping that a clean OS install will make this go away for a long time, but unless they fixed this in Lion, I suspect I'll be seeing it again.

Based on an earlier post that suggested removing the thumbnailcache folders, I created a simple shell script which resolves the problem for me.

sudo find /private/var/folders -name "*.thumbnailcache" | xargs rm -rf

Simply open a terminal window and run the command listed above then reboot your machine.

There are a few requirements in order for this to work.

• Your user must be an administrator
• The applications with pixelated icons must be closed

Appreciate the effort, Nate, but for those of us using software ( for example ComicBookLover ) which creates thumbnail icons for certain files, the script makes no difference. Simply rebooting the machine without running the script clears the cache enough to solve the problem temporarily and running the script before reboot does not solve the issue permanently. My theory on this for awhile has been that though the issue shows itself occasionally for most, those of us that use apps like I mentioned above, or even use customized icons that may not really be up to SL specs, aggrevate the issue. So, those, like you, who use "normal" icons for the most part, only see part of the problem or see it much less frequently. But thanks for trying.

I'm afraid that removing the thumbnailcache is probably just as much a temporary fix as any of the other fixes reported here so far.

I just finished doing a "clean" install of Lion on my Mac Pro and after only about a day and a half, I'm seeing the cache issue as well. I've got invisible icons in the Dock, blury icons all over.

This was a clean install. Backed up my Snow Leopard drive, booted from the backup drive, wiped out the Snow Leopard drive, installed Lion to the cleaned drive.

My current OS session has been running for 2 days and just over 3 hours. I started seeing blury icons only after about a day or so.

I get the feeling that Apple is just going to ignore the problem as if it doesn't exist. I mean, we seem to be the vocal minority and unless people start storming the Apple Store's with this problem, I suspect it will stick around forever.

Bummer. I was also hoping Lion would fix this issue. I just upgraded to Lion and while it seems faster and there are some nice changes (two steps forward, one step back kinda things), it didn't solve several problems that I've had (my iMac won't connect to the internet after sleeping - see other threads). I just upgraded last night, so I'll watch the icons and let you know what happens.

I performed a clean install of Lion using a DVD I burned form the Lion download. I performed this clean install last Thursday ( the day after Lion release ) on a system that had used an in place upgrade to Snow Leopard. So far NO blurry icon issue either in the dock, launchpad or finder. I have not, however used Candybar or ComicBookLover yet ( the two apps I was using in the past that gereate or change icons different than standard ). I'll post back here if/when I use those two apps and the problem resurfaces. If it does not, it could be that this issue was related to in place upgrades somehow. In any event, at least for now, a clean install of Lion seems to have fixed it.

Unfortunately, it won't take too long before blury icons start showing up. I posted my "clean install" just a couple of posts back.

To be fair, it's been 2 days since I rebooted Lion due to an update and I haven't seen any blury icons yet. However, it wasn't very long after the clean install that they started showing up.

Sorry to burst your bubble. I really hoped that Lion would fix this stupid annoying bug, but unfortunately, it did not.

I noticed that post vesper but also noticed the quotes around "clean" ( notice mine has no quotes ). Just for the record, was your install from a booted DVD or USB key burned from the DMG contained within the Lion Package to a completely fresh ( reformatted, single blank partition ) HD ? That's what I did, resulting in a truly clean install, rather than one from, for example, a clean install of Snow Leopard from the SL DVD onto which Lion is installed over it. My iMac has been running a whole week now without reboot and no icon issues yet.

Again though, I have still not run any software which generates thumbnail or otherwise customized icons. If my original theory that these programs instigate the issues is correct, maybe I will see the issue after running them.

@Dolphbucs, my install was from an external hard drive (Firewire-800) that I had used Super Duper! to make a copy of my Main boot drive, I booted that external drive, wiped out my Main boot drive, and did a clean install from the booted external hard drive.

I'm not sure why you would think that just because I put quotes around the word clean that the install would be anything but a truly clean install.

After the install, I started seeing fuzzy icons about 2 days in. I had to reboot the OS for some reason, and I haven't seen any issues with fuzzy icons since. It's only been just under 3 1/3 days since that reboot.

Now maybe, the system was a little messed up from just having an OS installed and a bunch of programs installed from the Mac App Store. But I'm hoping that the fuzzy icon thing is a thing of the past.

I check a program called CandyBar that stores icons and allows the user to replace certain icons with ones downloaded from sites that specialize in such images. When I was seeing the fuzzy icons before the reboot, the icons displayed in CandyBar were all fuzzy until the image was scaled down to 32x32.

Now, the icons are looking great at 512x512. So I'm hoping.

Lion definitely has some serious bugs. I've had the Finder crash on me several times so far since the reboot and I have been seeing that wonderful beachball cursor way more often now than with Snow Leopard. However, my machine is a little old (8/2006) and it could just be showing it's age.

Anyway, maybe my fuzzy icon problem was all the software installs and not the problem we have been seeing for so darn long.