Cannot move icons on desktop ...

Are you pressing too hard? The Trackpad has force touch which has multiple levels of pressure to activate different things. If you fully press the trackpad on an icon, it will QuickLook the file which sort of opens the file.

You can turn off Force Click in the Trackpad System Preferences.

splasch wrote:

Hi there - I've just purchased a new MacBook Pro 2020 running Big Sur. I had problems with the Migration Assistant from my old MacBook Pro 2017 running High Sierra - it failed - and new MacBook would not start. Assistance from Apple Support restarted in Recovery mode, then reinstalled OS from internet, then used Time Machine to migrate data. Many applications did not come across but I've since discovered that is because they are 32 bit applications (Grrrr) ...

Once OS installed from internet, could not move icons on desktop - could sort by name, and stack, but could not click and drag - click and hold would only open the item.

Apple Support advised no preferences to set this in Big Sur so decided it was an OS issue. Then reinstalled OS from Hard Drive - same issue. Any ideas?

Hmmm.

—Did you try deleting the Desktop.plist (Desktop Preferences) and reboot..(?)

From the Finder>Go>Go To Folder, copy & paste :

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

If no resolve

—You could test by opening a new guest user account, from >System Preferences>User & Groups

log in, create a few screen shots are what ever, and test.

if it works there

—Try a SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Takes noticeable longer to get to the login screen, does a 5-15 minute disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, etc.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test as caches get rebuilt.

splasch wrote:

Barney, you are a star !! That's it - thank you ... interesting that Apple Phone Support were unable to solve this ....

Nice !

I will say it was one of the first things I turned off on my new Mac.

How to use the Force Touch trackpad

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352

I see I am late to the party as usual 😉