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Mac is moving my drives icons on the desktop when I put it to sleep

I have my disk drives (all SSDs) arranged in the upper right corner of my desktop on my M2 Mac mini running Ventura 13.4.1. If I put the Mac to sleep using the Sleep option in the Apple Menu and wait 30 seconds or so and wake it back up, the icons have been drastically moved around.


Here's a picture of the corner of the desktop before putting the Mac to sleep:


And here's what it looks like after I put the Mac to sleep and wait 30 seconds or so before tapping the shift key to wake it up:


What the heck is going on? It has been doing this for a while and it is driving me even more crazy than I normally am!


LewK

Mac mini, macOS 13.4

Posted on Jun 26, 2023 3:28 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 24, 2023 8:08 PM

I'm having this issue on a brand-new Mac Studio running Ventura. So, it's not a Sonoma issue, as one commenter mentioned. It's also not related to Migration Assistant, because I did a completely clean install on this machine and did NOT migrate. I always use Snap to Grid, so for those who were using a different Finder setting, changing it *to* Snap to Grid likely won't fix it.


Just a month ago, this Mac Studio replaced a 2020 iMac that was also running Ventura, and this issue did not appear until I started using the Mac Studio. I also have a 2023 MacBook Pro, running Sonoma, that does NOT display this issue.


So, there appears to be no particular rhyme or reason—except in my case, out of three Macs, it's only happening on the Mac Studio.


To the commenter who disabled the display of external drives, it's fantastic that that works for you. But I have 5 drives, and I need to be able to see—at a glance—that they have all properly mounted. We all work differently of course.


For certain users, the keyboard shortcuts for sorting might work. They can be found in Finder > View > Sort By. (No, it shouldn't be necessary to hit a shortcut, but as a workaround until this is fixed, it's available.) Unfortunately neither of those works for me as any of the available options would change the desired order of my icons. But your needs may be different.


Apple really needs to fix this.

59 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 24, 2023 8:08 PM in response to Lewis Kopp

I'm having this issue on a brand-new Mac Studio running Ventura. So, it's not a Sonoma issue, as one commenter mentioned. It's also not related to Migration Assistant, because I did a completely clean install on this machine and did NOT migrate. I always use Snap to Grid, so for those who were using a different Finder setting, changing it *to* Snap to Grid likely won't fix it.


Just a month ago, this Mac Studio replaced a 2020 iMac that was also running Ventura, and this issue did not appear until I started using the Mac Studio. I also have a 2023 MacBook Pro, running Sonoma, that does NOT display this issue.


So, there appears to be no particular rhyme or reason—except in my case, out of three Macs, it's only happening on the Mac Studio.


To the commenter who disabled the display of external drives, it's fantastic that that works for you. But I have 5 drives, and I need to be able to see—at a glance—that they have all properly mounted. We all work differently of course.


For certain users, the keyboard shortcuts for sorting might work. They can be found in Finder > View > Sort By. (No, it shouldn't be necessary to hit a shortcut, but as a workaround until this is fixed, it's available.) Unfortunately neither of those works for me as any of the available options would change the desired order of my icons. But your needs may be different.


Apple really needs to fix this.

Oct 5, 2023 5:43 AM in response to bruno75

Thanks to all those who have been looking into this issue! I have done some more testing and have come up with an idea of what is happening in my particular case.


I'm using a 4K monitor and what I've noticed for a while is that the Mac seems to be handling the 4K monitor as if it was four 2K monitors. Examples of this behavior is that if I put the Mac to sleep and later wake it up, windows that were full height on the monitor are now half height. This applied to Music, Safari, etc.. I don't recall if the width changed as I seldom need the windows to be wider than half of the screen.


What I finally did that really showed this might be the cause of the issue is I moved all the icons on my desktop other than the single, far right column over to the far left side of the screen. So my screen had a bunch of files and folders on the left of the screen and a single, full height column on the far right of the screen and started some testing:


1) When I put the Mac to sleep and woke it up, the drive icons moved.

2) I moved all the none drive icons to the left half of the screen, put the Mac to sleep and woke it up, the drive icons stayed where they had been.

3) I started moving files from the left to back under the drive icons, a couple at a time. When I did the sleep-wake cycle, the drive icons stayed where they were - UNTIL I had file or folder icons extending below the top half of the screen!


Eureka! :-)


With the grid size I had selected, I was able to have 24 icons in a column. When there were 12 icons in the right column things stayed put. But if there were 13, the very top drive icon would move. If there were 14, the top 2 drive icons would move. Etc..


So my conclusion is that there is a problem with how either MacOS or the M2 graphics system is handling a 4K screen. I need to do some further testing comparing how my M1 mini and M2 mini handle this issue. But I'm currently on a trip and don't have either system available to test with.


If you aren't using a 4K monitor and are having this sort of issue, I'm not sure what the underlying cause might be. But I suspect the same sort of thing would happen with an 8K monitor as well, although I have no idea if it would happen with a column half the height or a quarter of the height of the screen.


By the way, my 4K monitor is just a 42" diagonal 4K TV monitor, not specifically a computer monitor. The reason for that is that with my eyes, I can actually use the screen without my reading glasses if I'm more than about 3' from the screen. The monitor is mounted on a corner countertop as far back as it can fit and that works out to let me sit normally and be just a bit more than 3' from the screen so my 71 year old eyes don't need my readers. :-)


Lew

Jun 28, 2023 9:44 AM in response to bruno75

1: I can't say exactly when it started happening. I'm trying to do some checking on that aspect of it.


2: I tried both restarting and shutting down and starting and it came up as it was supposed to. But once I put it to sleep, and then woke it up, it moved them.


3: I created a new user, turned on having the internal drive on the desk top, rearranged the icons to match my normal account and put it to sleep. When I woke it, the icons were in the correct spots.


Additionally, I checked setting the desktop icon size and spacing to the be the same for both accounts - both in the default size & spacing and in the size and spacing I normally use. It didn't affect anything. Both accounts behaved the same.


I used the Migration app to move everything from my M1 mini to the M2 mini when I got the M2.


I have had problems with the my M2 mini running Ventura since I got it, e.g. I have never gotten Adobe Lightroom Classic to open on it. Photoshop works fine, but Lightroom brings up the splash screen and then quits. It doesn't crash as such, it just quits. And it doesn't make any difference if I open the app first or try to open a Lightroom library.


Just as a note, I've been using Apple computers since 1979 when I first bought an Apple ][. I've got a 2012 Mac Pro running to my left, my M1 mini running to my right, a Blueberry iMac and a 17" MacBook Pro to my right as well. Then there are 2 G5 Mac Pros under my counter and a SuperMac G4 tower. There are 3 other older Mac minis in the house as well an iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro. I also made my living as a computer programmer for over 20 years. I'm not a newbie by any stretch of the imagination. I am 70 though and the old brain isn't working as well as it use to. I use to be very good at debugging software or hardware, but I'm not as good as I use to be. 🫤


I'm also getting very frustrated that Apple has screwed up so many of their apps, e.g. iPage '09 has much more functionality than the current version. These days I just want to use my computer, not spend days debugging and rebuilding - which has become much more often than it ever use to be. ☹️

Oct 4, 2023 4:40 AM in response to Lewis Kopp

After some experimenting I got my drive icons to lock in place.


Move drive icons to desire location

right click on desktop and sort icons "snap to grid"

move icons again and they will stop in another location that you do not want

set icons to location: "none"

move icons to desire location

set icons to "snap to grid"


Many steps which may not be required in this order but that is working for me.

Nov 15, 2023 8:48 AM in response to ku4hx

Lol that's funny.. Spend $12K on a machine you should expect and icon to stay in place not float too a new location each time you restart the thing... If a $200 Dell can accomplish this an extremely pricey system should as well.. Glad you like a clean wallpaper, others want fast access to the things they use most :( Just had to rebut this post.....

Apr 6, 2024 3:29 AM in response to Lewis Kopp

Apple should fix this.


I need my desktop to behave itself and do the very simple things, like displaying my icons where I put them, far, far more than I need to be able to link widgets to my mate's phone on the fly or whatever Apple's latest 'colouring in' fetish is.


A perfect example of breaking something important in the pursuit of something utterly inconsequential.

Jan 9, 2024 8:17 AM in response to Normski4ash

Just read something which I thought might have been here, which seems to fiy with my latest workaround, and that is on wake/boot the desktop icons are larger than you have set them for, therefore they overlap and thus move. Then maybe a split second later, the system realises you want smaller icons, so it resizes them, but now is too late as it has already moved the icons.

I have moved everything to the left side of the desktop except my 6 drives, and I have moved them further (Farther) apart than they were (bigger gap between) and touch wood, nothing has moved for a while...

Post was by Joel Pro by the way, I'll copy and paste below image.


Mac is moving my drives icons on the desktop when I put it to sleep


I have a Mac Studio with the same issue.

based on watching my boot up closely when my monitor is awake I get the feeling the Mac goes through one of two things, either a “what are your screen dimensions?” cycle where it briefly defaults first to an assumed-but incorrect- screen size than I have set for my monitor, or it defaults briefly to an assumed- but incorrect - icon size setting that is bigger than the one I’ve chosen. In other words all my icons are - for a fraction of a second - larger than I have them set - either through temporarily incorrect screen dimensions or icon size settings.


In any event the result is that the icons - briefly - no longer fit where I placed them - they’d overlap so they reorder before the system realizes “oh you set your screen dimensions to THAT size!” Or “oh your icons are set to be smaller!”


If this is true, the order of events on wake up / boot up could be causing this. I have a third party external monitor. I assume the rest of us do too. So it might be taking a bit of time to communicate with the external monitor during which the Mac makes incorrect assumptions about what it has to do. which causes the reordering.


like I say I’m probably wrong. But I’ve seen my icons be too big for a fraction of a second and they scramble to new positions and then shrink back down.


anyone else see that?


Apr 12, 2024 5:35 AM in response to Th3Cr0w

Tried replying a couple of hours ago, no idea why it isn't showing, apologies if it appears twice. I posted my solution to this a while ago, though I can't take the credit for it. When the OS comes out of sleep or boots, for a brief moment it sees everything at default settings, my icon are smaller than the default, so seeing mine larger means they will overlap in their current position, so the OS moves them. As the waken/boot continues, it realises that you want them smaller, so it resizes them, too late came the cry, it had already moved them. The answer for me was to firstly move slightly to the left (presuming they are down the righthand side,) then move them apart vertically, giving more space around them. Problem solved for me, few months ago now. I have earlier today bunched them up again, set sleep, waken up and they moved again... Hope this helps.

Sep 30, 2023 4:41 AM in response to ehm1rt13

Until I upgraded my Mac Studio to Sonoma from Ventura a few days ago, my disk icons did stay put (even the one for the Time Machine disk which only appeared after Time Machine completed its job on bootstrap). Now, with Sonoma, disk icons keep moving around the right-hand edge of my screen and I keep putting them back. Something's broken somewhere... I also have file icons overlap one another, which I had neve seen before...


But, since the upgrade my system boots much faster then before; a tradeoff I'm ready to accept.

Jun 27, 2023 6:29 PM in response to Lewis Kopp

Hey there Lewis Kopp,


That is a strange thing to occur! Let's team up to help get this resolved. We'd like to start with learning more about what's happening, along with ruling out some possible causes:


  1. When did this start?
  2. Sometimes unexpected behavior can be resolved with a restart. Check out the section ‘Restart your Mac' here: Shut down or restart your Mac
  3. To test for this in a new user, check out the steps under 'Add account' here: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac


Cheers!

Jan 9, 2024 7:56 AM in response to Lewis Kopp

I have a Mac Studio with the same issue.

based on watching my boot up closely when my monitor is awake I get the feeling the Mac goes through one of two things, either a “what are your screen dimensions?” cycle where it briefly defaults first to an assumed-but incorrect- screen size than I have set for my monitor, or it defaults briefly to an assumed- but incorrect - icon size setting that is bigger than the one I’ve chosen. In other words all my icons are - for a fraction of a second - larger than I have them set - either through temporarily incorrect screen dimensions or icon size settings.


In any event the result is that the icons - briefly - no longer fit where I placed them - they’d overlap so they reorder before the system realizes “oh you set your screen dimensions to THAT size!” Or “oh your icons are set to be smaller!”


If this is true, the order of events on wake up / boot up could be causing this. I have a third party external monitor. I assume the rest of us do too. So it might be taking a bit of time to communicate with the external monitor during which the Mac makes incorrect assumptions about what it has to do. which causes the reordering.


like I say I’m probably wrong. But I’ve seen my icons be too big for a fraction of a second and they scramble to new positions and then shrink back down.


anyone else see that?

Feb 7, 2024 10:33 AM in response to Lewis Kopp

Ignore my username, I'm using Ventura. That said, I just purchased a Mac Studio. It came with 13.6.3. And now that I'm using this the moving hard drive thing has started happening. Drives would relocate after waking up from "Sleep" and also after shut-down and restarts. (I have three drives on my desktop, my internal HD and two external drives). I've tried all the recommendations here, none have worked. Then updated MacOS to 13.6.4 and my drive icons still do their dance.


I also had about 20 other things on my desktop - files and folders - because I'm lazy and haven't filed them where they should be. So I thought to myself, "Hey, self, what happens if you take all the stuff on your desktop and, you know, put them on your hard drives where they are supposed to be? Have only the three drives icons on the desktop? What happens then?"


So, I cleaned all the stuff off my desktop leaving only my HD icons.


Guess what happened?


It has worked!!! Been 7 days so far, and drive icons are where I put them.


Try this, if you have other stuff on your desktop.


Cheers!

Mac is moving my drives icons on the desktop when I put it to sleep

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