Can’t set folder icons for the folders inside external exFAT or FAT32 hard drives on macOS Sonoma
Before updating my macs (M2 Air 15” and M1 Pro 13”) to Sonoma from Ventura, I was able to set custom preview icons for the folders inside my external exFAT drives (Not talking about the icon of the drive itself) the same way I do on any file/folder on my mac: Get Info > Drag and drop the image to the icon on the top left corner.
After updating to Sonoma, all of my custom folder icons disappeared inside my external drives and now when I try to set an icon, a file with the name “Icon?” appears with zero bytes inside the folder and the folder icon remains unchanged.
What I have tried;
- Using jpg, png, and icns.
- Setting the icon on the mac’s drive and copying the folder to the external drive (icon disappears)
- Putting the icon file inside the folder manually and renaming it to “Icon?”.
I also have one 8gb drive, so I decided to make sure that this is related to file system: I tried formatting it to APFS, exFAT and FAT (MS-DOS). I am only able to set folder icons when it is using APFS.
I hope this is a temporary bug that will be fixed with future updates, here’s another discussion about the same issue with the earlier macOS versions: No more custom folder icons on FAT32 and … - Apple Community
MacBook Air 15″
