Q: Blurry/pixelated icons at random in Finder windows

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this or not, but this problem seem to happen when OS X needs to create (or update) an icon. For example, whenever Chrome updates itself, its icon gets pixelated (see the attached image). Likewise, whenever I install a new application, its icon is pixelated. The only solution, albeit a temporary one until it happens again, is to reboot.

So this weekend I finally got around to rebuilding my Mac's system from scratch, in addition to the app icons, this system wouldn't save preview icons for new image files saved from Photoshop and other apps, was really slow, other problems, etc.

So: clean format, brand new Mountain Lion install (previous one had been an upgraded system from Lion), start to selectively re-build app installs and account data. Things are snappier, but every single app store download comes with the lo-res icons. Every downloaded .DMG, same thing. The icons seem to fix on re-logs or restarts, but still annoying.

So today I installed the developer preview of Mavericks, seeing as how I've got fresh backups of everything. Icon problem is fixed. App store downloads, .DMG downloads, all of it.

2010 iMac, 1 TB HDD, 16GB RAM

Well, that's encouraging! Nice to know Apple can fix things... if you give them 4 years!

I have Snow leopard OS 10.6.8,

MacPro3,1

  Processor Name:    Quad-Core Intel Xeon

  Processor Speed:    2.8 GHz

  Number Of Processors:    2

  Total Number Of Cores:    8

  L2 Cache (per processor):    12 MB

  Memory:    10 GB

  Bus Speed:    1.6 GHz

  Boot ROM Version:    MP31.006C.B05

  SMC Version (system):    1.25f4

Apparently I can't upgrade to Mountain lion because the processor won't work well with that OS system. Is that true? Will I need to buy a new computer? I don't have the money right now. It probably won't do any good though to upgrade it to Mountain Lion, as the blurry icons seem to still linger in Mountain Lion. Has anyone had any success in upgrading their operating sytem, as far as the blurry icons go?

A 3,1 Mac Pro can indeed run Mountain Lion. You can upgrade directly from Snow Leopard. There's no need to first purchase Lion.

for all that is good and right PLEASE DONT DO IT ArtistGirl ... I have nearly the identical set up as you (Mac 3,1, 2x2.8 Quad-Core Intel Xeon, NVIDI GeForce 8800GT) except I have 16 GB of DDR2 RAM ... Lion ran nice and fast on my machine, as well did Snow Leopard, but the installation of Mountain Lion became the bane of my computing existance .... I would have gone back to Lion but my backups became corrupt after the Mountain Lion install. Its been a complete nightmare ... just food for thought ... we both have the minimum requirement machines and my experience has been awful too say the least ... PLUS all the wonderful pixelated icon issues still exist in all their "glory"

Good news if it is finally fixed but what about the CS6 icon issue which I think is related to the blurry icon problem. Is this finally fixed as well?

@MoonRunner

The CS6 icons are fine under Mavericks on my iMac.

I was seeing the Finder icon issue with my fresh ML install, so for me, at least, it wasn't because of CS6. I also have CS6 on a MacBook Air running ML, with no problems, either with preview icons or .dmg/app icons.

I think the bug is related to a certain vintage/combination of hardware, which is a theory I think I've seen posted on here before. I would be very interested if someone else with the bug is able to install Mavericks on the affected machine.

It sound like Apple finally got their act together. I’m not a developer so I can’t download Mavericks but will happily await the final version knowing that all our problems will be history. Thanks for the info.

Hi,

What worked for me was very easy indeed -I have a MB Air, 2012 model with the latest version of Mountain Lion installed-  I went into 'your macs name'/library/preferences and removed the only dock.plist file I could find. Afer that a restart and voilà, problem solved. Hope this helps, good luck.

Thanks for the information. Did it solve also the blurry/pixelated icons at random in the Desktop and other Finder windows (not just in the Dock)?

Alas, if it were that easy a fix, there probably wouldn't be 29 pages of people suggesting different things in this thread.

Sad to say, but I'll bet my right procesor core it will come back for you. Just plain rebooting fixes the blurry icons for me every time. But, like undead pixels of screen resolutions past, they always come back. Usually within an hour.

I've given up for now and am just begrudingly living with zombie icons that look like they're from 1995 in the "world's most advanced operating system" of 2013. I just have to keep my shotgun terminal.app at the ready in case one shambles up and tries to bite me.

Yeah, same here. Hopefully OS X 10.8.5 will fix it.

I'm sorry, I didn't have those pixelated icons at random, so I cannot tell.

I know it sounds ridiculously easy, but even after restarting no sign of them....I hope it stays that way. Otherwise like you say; 10.8.5

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.