Title: Ventura : (a) Desktop icons change position after reboot (b) Aliases get their icons stripped off after their (alias) creation

Well, that all seems correct, and it should work across a restart.

At this point, the only thing I can suggest is to try to delete Finder's preferences.

A corrupted preference file can cause weird behavior.

In Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste

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

drag the file to the trash and force relaunch the Finder.

Then adjust everything as you described, restart and see if it helped.

Since, as Barney corrected pointed out, these are governed by Finder preferences, there is a chance that those preferences may have become subtly corrupted (something that seems to have become more common with the Finder in recent versions).

In those instances, one thing that may work is to delete this preference file, which will have it be recreated again, with default values.

1) In Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste

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

2) Drag the file out of the Preferences folder, and place it temporarily on the Desktop

3) Force-relaunch the Finder: press Command-Option-Escape, select Finder on the list, and click Relaunch

4) Set things as desired, and test. If it works, you can trash the plist file. If not, and if you so desire, you can put it back.

That is relevant information.

That file is where the location of items is stored.

It should be created and updated automatically.

For some reason, it is not being created, and thus the icons return to their default locations.

Further tests:

a) What happens if you do the following in Terminal:

touch ~/Desktop/.DS_Store

b) What is the output of the following command:

ls -ld ~/Desktop

These settings are set for individual folders. (For example so you can have one folder in list view and a different one in icon view, etc).

In the images you posted, it seems to me that they refer to something other than the actual desktop. Click on an empty area of the desktop (not on a window or icon). Then do View->Show View Options. You want to affect the settings for the actual desktop, and not a window showing the Desktop folder.

Regarding (a): how icons are arranged on the Desktop is unrelated to the settings you mentioned in Desktop & Dock - these refer to how different Spaces (Desktops) are arranged amongst themselves.

The arrangement of icons is determined by the Finder-specific settings. I am away from my mac so I will only be able to check details later today, but take a look at yhe options under the View menu. With the Desktop active, choose View->Show View Options and see what is checked there.

You would have to ask Apple to copy a custom icon to the alias on creation. The current alias implementation does not do that.

For files, the custom icon is stored in a ResourceFork extended attribute on the file itself.

For folders, the custom icon is stored in the resource fork of an hidden, empty file named, Icon? in the folder itself. As an alias to a folder is a file, the resource fork of that Icon? file would have to be copied into the resource fork of the alias and that is not done, either.

I don't now how difficult that would be to implement.

Sounds to me you have the icons set to align with the grid ... a user selectable option.

https://gilsmethod.com/how-to-align-mac-os-desktop-icons-to-the-grid

Align and resize items in icon view on Mac - Apple Support

Have icons aligned and sorted automatically: Choose Sort By, then choose an option. "Snap To" seems to be set.

I change the desktop icon layout and checked the Finder preferences, but there were no icon positions set in that preference file so maybe the DS store does do dual usage for the desktop and the desktop folder.

If that file is not being written correctly, then you would have to delete it and hopefully when it’s rebuilt, it will be writeable again.

I don't think the .DS_Store file has anything to do with the Desktop. It would affect the Desktop folder, but the Desktop is managed with Finder preferences:

    DesktopViewSettings =     {
        GroupBy = Kind;
        IconViewSettings =         {
            arrangeBy = dateAdded;
            backgroundColorBlue = 1;
            backgroundColorGreen = 1;
            backgroundColorRed = 1;
            backgroundType = 0;
            gridOffsetX = 0;
            gridOffsetY = 0;
            gridSpacing = 54;
            iconSize = 64;
            labelOnBottom = 1;
            showIconPreview = 1;
            showItemInfo = 0;
            textSize = 12;
            viewOptionsVersion = 1;
        };
    };