Saved files to desktop not showing up

Hello vnloke,

It sounds like files you save appear in Recents, but don't appear in the Desktop folder you're saving them to. I know it's important to have the security of knowing your files are saving successfully, so I'm happy to help you get to the bottom of this.

All files on your Mac must be saved someplace, and Recents is not an actual location you can save to. Recents is simply showing you all of your recent files, no matter where they are saved, and each file itself has to be saved to some other location. The first step is figuring out where those files are actually being saved to. Open up Finder, go to the Recents tab, and select one of the files you're referring to. At the bottom of Finder, you should see a path of where the file is located on your Mac (e.g., Macintosh HD > Users > Tim Cook > Downloads > Screen Shot...). Do you have Desktop listed in the file path there? If you aren't seeing the path, select View > Show Path Bar, from the Apple Menu bar.

If you are seeing Desktop in the file path for one of the files you saved, but aren't seeing in the Desktop folder, select Desktop from the left side of Finder and adjust the item grouping so that you're viewing Date Created as seen here: Sort items, group icons, and resize columns in the Finder on Mac. Check to see if you're able to locate some of the files you saved to Desktop by the date they were created. Also, try locating a file by doing a search in Finder for the name of the file itself and only search within Desktop. Do you see the file listed there when you do a search for it?

If the issue persists, respond back. with the answers to the following questions:

1. What happens when you try to save a new file to Desktop? You can test this by opening TextEdit, selecting New Document, and then saving that new document to Desktop.
2. Is this only happening with specific files, or is it every file you save to Desktop?
3. Are you looking in the Finder app when you see the files aren't saving to Desktop, or is this happening when viewing files someplace else?

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Take care.

Are you sure the files aren't on the desktop?

Mac OS has this nifty trick to group similar items on the desktop.

For better clarity, in Finder, just hit cmd-shift-D to get a window with the desktop's "content"...

Still not there?

hth

david