Custom folder icons missing after updating to Mac OS Sonoma, also unable to apply new folder icon to any folders on external hard drives.
Hi. My custom folder icons have all been replaced by the generic blue folder icon after an update from OS Ventura to OS Sonoma. This happened once before with an OS update but I do not recall the fix that was applied at the time. I'm using a Mac Mini 2018. I have various SSD's connected and they all exhibit the same issue. As well as the icons not showing, I can't apply the icons again either. They simply do not show. I have tried the following so far with no success:
- Restart the Mac
- Restart the Mac in Safe Mode, then restart in normal mode
- Create a new admin account and compare
- Reattach the external hard drives
- Allow Finder Full Disk access
- Copy a folder from an external HDD and then copy to the desktop (which then allows an icon to be applied the the folder) then copy back to the external HDD
- Run the following commands in Terminal: sudo find /private/var/folders/ \( -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -or -name com.apple.iconservices \) -exec rm -rfv {} \; ; sleep 3;sudo touch /Applications/* ; killall Dock; killall Finder
This issue is something that crops up routinely it seems.
I am not sure if this is a 'plist' issue, a permissions issue, or something else.
One thing I need to understand is where the data is. If the icon and .DS_Store is still intact per folder, then I should be able to reinstate the custom icons somehow. I know that the icon? file can be shown per folder by holding down [Cmd + Shift + .], and that the .DS_Store cannot be seen whatsoever even when show all files is selected but I am not yet at the point of creating a root account and investigating further.
If the OS is reinstalled afresh, would this resolve the issue?
Any insight welcome.
Thanks
Mac mini (2018)
