Folders with custom icons are now plain folders post-upgrade

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Folders with custom icons are now plain folders post-upgrade

I have a collection of hundreds of folder icons which I've copied onto drives and devices for years. I am transferring my data to a new MacBook Pro with Monterey. While installed software and their files display with their icons, the previously-customized folders are now generic (all the icons are gone). The icon folders are collected in my Documents folder and were downloaded from iCloud from the old Mac. (They all still show as custom icons on the old Mac.)

What happened to those folders, and can I still use old icon images with the new system?

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.0

Posted on Nov 8, 2021 8:38 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 8, 2021 10:13 AM in response to grtgrfx

i've been customizing my folder icons for years too. for the most part they carry over between and during updates/upgrades. but when i moved my data from my previous iMac to my current iMac, all my folder icons reverted to the generic blue folders. i needed to manually change them back to my custom icons. i'm not 100% certain, but maybe that's what you are encountering now. and, yes, the old icons should work with the new mac. mine did.

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Answer 2

grtgrfx Author

Level 1

42 points

Nov 17, 2021 7:31 PM in response to jeffreythefrog

I would do that, but the icons can't be moved from one Mac to the other, or to an external drive to the other, without becoming generic again. So, no idea how to access the old Mac and copy to the new one. The only option I can see is to connect various external drives to the old Mac, put the icons on them one at a time, then connect the customized drives to the new Mac (where they stay custom) and copy from drives to new folders or drives on the new Mac. That would be hugely time-consuming though, mounting and dismounting a hundred times to access all the icons in my collection. Is this an iCloud issue? Why don't they copy like they did a few years ago...?

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Folders with custom icons are now plain folders post-upgrade

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