Folders with generic "document" icon

I've been trying to figure out why all of my folders are suddenly blue again when viewed from in Catalina, even on my other machine. I was trying to think what I may have done which resulted in this positive development.

One possibility is that sometime over the past few days, I may have relaunched the Finder. Whether or not that has any thing to do with the blue folders reappearing, I honestly do not know.

For those of you who may not know how to do this, simply hold down your Option key, right-click on the Finder icon in your Dock, and choose the "Relaunch" option. As I said, it may do nothing at all to fix the generic icon problem, but is worth a try, and it won't do any harm to your computer.

The second thing I thought of was that over the past few days, I have made invisible files visible, and vice versa. You can do it in the Terminal, but I have this neat, little, free app called Desktop Utility which does that, and more. You can download it here:

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/38299/desktoputility

Again, I don't know if making invisible files visible, and then reversing it fixed the white generic document icon problem or not. But again, it couldn't hurt to try.

If either of these two options work for anyone here, please let me know. Thanks. I am as curious about this as you are.

I also got many folders with generic white icons after upgrading to Catalina. I noticed that affected folders have the "extended attributes" (Finder metadata) included, as evidenced by "@" in the long listing for the second folder (my commands in italics):

ls -l

drwxr-xr-x  15 user  staff     480 Feb  1  2008 Folder1

drwxrwxrwx@ 23 user  staff     736 Oct 15  2017 Folder2

Command xattr reveals the type of metadata:

xattr Folder2

com.apple.FinderInfo

It can be removed with:

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo Folder2

and the folder icon is restored. The folders in question were carried through many backup/restore cycles and computer swaps, so they must be dating to much older OS versions, even pre-OS X. Probably that's why this does not affect everyone. I hope this helps.

Very interesting Kapitan Kloss. Personally, I am unable to test this, because I no longer have an folders with the white generic document icon.

However a question for you: If I understand you correctly, the "xattr -d xxxxxx" command has to be used on every affected folder individually. If so, then if a person has hundreds or thousands of affected folders, then this is really not a practical solution, being as it would be very time-consuming to perform this operation on so many folders.

Also, although you don't mention it here, I am assuming that a person has to navigate -- via the Terminal -- to the actual location on their hard drive where each affected folder is located, using the "cd" command. Correct? Again, this makes it quite a time-consuming process for people who have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of such folders.

I am wondering, is there is possibly a batch "xttr -d" command which could automatically search out and change every affected folder, without knowing the actual folder names, kind of like a catch-all grep pattern?

If not, maybe someone more talented than I can write some kind of AppleScript or Automator script which could perform such a grep-like batch operation.

I am going to write to a talented AppleScript writer I know. Maybe he will be willing to help those of you who are still afflicted with this issue.

Of course one can do all folders at a given level at once, ignoring error messages for those which do not have the extra attributes:

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo *

and yes, it does require navigating the folder hierarchy in the Terminal. It's not without a downside, since I think the command removes also other attributes, like labels, that you might actually want to preserve.

Maybe a proper form of the find command would let you do this recursively, but in my case I don't have enough of those folders to justify the effort...

@4score Please don't post random links without any description of what it is or why you are posting it. For one thing you link could be a link to spam or trojans or adware crap. We don't know. Second, what is your experience with this app and have you actually tried it on the problem being discussed in this thread? Or are you just a shill for this piece of software which may be helpful or could just as easily be a giant POS designed to infect people's computers.

Also noting that they seem to be appropriating the nickname of "CCC" which has long been associated with Carbon Copy Cloner which makes me think these people don't care which makes me wonder further about this piece of sw.

I had changed quite a lot of the "document icons" back to blue folders manually, and then tried the finder relaunch. Every single of the folders I had fixed changed back to the generic document icon. Please can someone fix this problem!

Anssi1953, please see my instructions further back in this thread. Using that Terminal method, you can fix multiple -- dozens, hundreds or thousands -- of folders within minutes, simultaneously. Please note that there is one error in my instructions, which I was not able to edit, because it was too late to edit when I noticed it.

The string "xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo*" should actually be "xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo *" with a space after "com.apple.FinderInfo". This command will drill down to every file and folder below the folder you are currently in. It does work, and quickly.

Another way to do it is to simply type "cd" in the Terminal, leave a space, and then drop a folder into the Terminal window. After that, use the "xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo *" command to change all folders inside of that folder.

I think it is not my job – and millions of other users in the community – to play around with terminal commands because of a mistake which Apple has made. I probably could do the thing, though. I started studying computer science in Helsinki University 1972 when there was only one computer size of three rooms in the house...

Now I'll just wait for an upgrade... This issue really doesn't have anything to do with usability. Just a cosmetic thing for me when using my computers.

The com.apple.FinderInfo stores legacy ‘Finder Info’ and additional not documented information for the Finder. Known are the color-tag or the hide extension flag (like .txt or .jpg) from the Get Info. Catalina still creates FinderInfo but I don't know if it also depends on it or if it's for backwards compatibility. New folders don't get it, so it seems safe to delete the attribute for folders. But I prefer not to delete the FinderInfo from files - and that does the above published Terminal command also. The following Terminal command is more selective:

find . -type d -exec xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo {} \; 2> /dev/null

The "find . -type d" part outputs only the path of all folders (and folders in folders etc., another benefit of this approach) in the current Terminal directory, and passes that to the "-exec xattr" command (the {}). "2> /dev/null" inhibits a long list of errors for folders without FinderInfo. Because also nested folders are cleaned the execution can take some time if Documents or your user folder is your starting point.

But it should be clear: this is a Finder bug, misinterpreting com.apple.FinderInfo, and Apple should solve it, not maybe risky Terminal commands.

Hello Henry. Thank you for the additional information regarding the Terminal command, as well as the more refined command which only addresses folders, and does not touch other types of files. Well done! I was hoping to try out your refined command before I add it to my tutorial on my blog. However, I no longer have any generic folders on my machine with which to test it.

[Edited by Moderator]

Hi all.

My problem with folder icons is different but still related to the Catalina upgrade.

My folders all retained the traditional blue folder icons. My problem is that many of my folders had icons that were a visual image of what was actually in the folder. Not only have I lost all of these 'customised' icons, but I can no longer add images (.jpg's etc) to replace the standard folder icons. I have always done this by simply copying the image and then, using the 'Get Info' option, using command+v to paste them into the icon.

Apologies for widening the problem. Terminal commands will not fix this, unless I am missing something.

Cheers....Scotty

Hello Scotty,

There's hope. Unless Apple decided that custom icons are obsolete, they should still be there, it's just the current Catalina Finder that doesn't display them because of a bug. You can check in Terminal with:

ls -a path&nameofyourfolder

(easiest way to get that path&name into the command line is drag it from the Finder)

There should be an "icon?" file in the list, whose 'resource'-part contains the actual icon.

Hello - yes same issue, but I have another theory.

I have noted previously that some folder icons were different to others. The newest ones (e.g. in the last ten years) are more or less completely flat whereas as older folder icons (when Apple designs was more 'skeuomorphic') were a bit more 3D angled and maybe had a hint of drop shadow. I can't remember how far back you have to go or when it changed, probably when Jonny Ive got rid of Note Pad's stitching and perforations (and quite right too).

Anyway, I reckon all the folder icons which now have generic document icon are my very oldest folders - maybe even predating OSX - so something changed in how these resources were stored or identified.

My only other note is that if you create a new folder, to get the right icon, and copy over all the contents, it is likely that your back up, or DropBox, or Carbon Copy Cloner will see this as a new item to be copied in its entirety, which may take time and possibly break recovery options. I don't know about Time Machine as I don't use it.

If you use the get info/copy&paste icon method, I don't think you get that issue and also, it's quicker .

I can confirm -- as has already been discussed earlier in this thread -- that, yes, the issue appears to be directly related to the age of the folder.

Regarding CCC, I do CCC backups twice daily, and I have not noticed that occurring. Either that, or my iMac is sufficiently fast, that I just don't notice the time difference.

I am having the exact same problem: so I looked into the file metadata using the mdls command and noticed the following:

All folders that appear normal have the following attributes, which I presume to be defaults:

kMDItemFSCreatorCode               = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags               = 0

Whereas all folders that appear as generic documents have different attributes:

kMDItemFSCreatorCode               = "/p"  # or "=" or "(null)"
kMDItemFSFinderFlags               = 992

So the question is: Is there a way to change all these attributes back to their default values in the terminal?