Since updating to Catalina, some of my folders are showing with incorrect icons

For the sake of any inexperienced users here, I am going to give you a simple, clear example using the Terminal app -- which you will find in /Applications/Utilities -- regarding how to restore your pretty blue folders, which have suddenly been replaced by white generic document icons in Catalina.

Suppose that your user name on your machine is "Tom". On your hard drive, in your "Documents" folder, you have another folder called "My Work Reports", and within that folder you have a subfolder called "Languages". Now, inside of the "Languages" folder, you have discovered some folders which have the white generic document icon. So the first thing you need to do is to navigate to the "Languages" folder like this by using the "cd" -- or "change directory" -- command:

cd /users/tom/documents/my\ work\ reports/languages/

After typing that, you obviously have to hit your "return" key.

1. Please notice that you don't need to specify uppercase or lowercase in the path. Lowercase will work just fine.

2. Please also notice that if you have folder names with spaces in them, you need to escape them with a backslash.

After using the previous command, you will be in your "Languages" folder.

The next step is to list everything that is found in the "Languages" folder, so we use this command:

ls -l

Again, hit your "return" key after typing it. That command will produce something like this:

drwxr-xr-x 3 tom staff 96 Apr 25 06:20 Afrikaans

drwxr-xr-x@ 5 tom staff 160 Apr 25 06:23 English

drwxr-xr-x 3 tom staff 96 Apr 25 06:32 French

drwxr-xr-x@ 4 tom staff 128 Apr 25 06:30 German

drwxr-xr-x@ 6 tom staff 192 Apr 25 06:35 Korean

drwxr-xr-x@ 4 tom staff 128 Apr 25 06:23 Portuguese

drwxr-xr-x 3 tom staff 96 Apr 25 04:38 Slovak

drwxr-xr-x@ 6 tom staff 192 Apr 25 07:02 Spanish

As you can see, five of the folders are marked with the "@", which means that they have the "extended attributes" -- Finder metadata -- included with them.

So, let's say we want to find out what extended attributes that "English" folder has. Thus, in the Terminal again, we would type the following:

xattr english

Again, hit your "return" key after typing that.

The above command will produce the following result, and immediately return you to your command prompt, like this. Incidentally, "HD" represents the supposed name of our hard drive in this example. As you can see, we are still in the "Languages" folder:

com.apple.FinderInfo

com.apple.macl

HD:languages tom$

So, to remove the "com.apple.FinderInfo" attribute from the folder named "English" we would type the following, and hit the "return" key:

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo english

The minute you do that, you will notice that your blue icon on the "English" folder has been restored.

Now, you can do the same thing individually with the other four folders, and hit the "return" key after each command like this:

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo german

Hit your "return" key.

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo korean

Hit your "return" key.

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo portuguese

Hit your "return" key.

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo spanish

Hit your "return" key.

As you do each one, you will immediately see each folder on your hard drive revert back to the normal blue folder.

Or, you can save some time and use the wildcard symbol "*" instead, to do all four of them at once like this:

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo*

Again, hit your "return" key after typing that command.

Please note that this will only affect folders in the "Languages" folder. To change folder icons in other folders, you obviously need to navigate there first using the "cd" command, as I explained earlier.

I hope these instructions help some of you.

Did not help. But the suggestion from WordWeaver777 did the trick. Navigate to the folder with the problematic folders, open a terminal window. Type cd and drag that folder on top of Terminal. And hit return. Then the command

xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo*

and you're done.

Boot into Safe Mode and check the folder's icons. Reboot normally and check again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing. 

Hi LightYear12,

Thanks for posting. It sounds like you have a question about folder icons.

When you say they're showing incorrect icons, what exactly are you seeing? Are you referring to custom icons you've created, or something else?

Also, which folders are affected?

If this is an issue related to custom icons, try setting a new custom icon to see if it works as expected: Create custom icons for files or folders on Mac

Depending on how the above works for you, you might try a quick restart by clicking Apple menu () > Restart; does that help?

Take care.

Hello there LightYear12,

Thanks for trying that step and replying with the results. Since that didn't clear things up, I recommend you Contact Apple Support to look into the issue further.

Cheers!

I have exactly the same situation. I have used Migration Assistant to move my data from a Time Machine backup back after a clean install of Catalina on a new (bigger) SSD. Also, my 3rd party applications went missing. Reinstalling them one by one: 1Password, Firefox, LibreOffice, Tweetbot, etc. Luckily all data/settings created by those apps were still there.

You will find an updated and even more comprehensive tutorial regarding how to fix the white generic document icons here. This is guaranteed to work, and you can do dozens, hundreds or thousands of folders in one fell swoop:

https://www.billkochman.com/Blog/get-rid-of-generic-white-icons-in-macos-catalina-and-restore-default-blue-folder-icons/

I've just noticed thread Folders with generic "document" icon. So it seems that lots of others have the same problem.

but only for folders in that one folder, not enclosing folders inside those.