How to fix the Notion icon bug on macOS?

I was afraid that might happen. In Monterey you could still run sudo commands on a lot of the system. Not so in Ventura or Sonoma. I also had a feeling the first command would fail. I looked to see if the file it was going to delete was in that location. It is, but it's also marked off-limits with a red "no permission" circle.

And I should have thought of this, first. I usually make suggestions in order from easiest to obnoxious. So, a really easy one to try is to find out if the flaw is somehow related to your normal account. Go into settings and create a new user account. Login to that. If that fixes the display, then something specifically in your account is causing the problem. If it doesn't, then the issue is system wide.

I had the same issue with Notion icon. The reason behind this bug is broken icons of certain sizes inside electron.icns file, you can find it inside Notion.app /Notion.app/Contents/Resources.

I guess your monitor is not retina, so that's why you see icons that matches to regular resolution and them broken by chance.

It is not obvious on first look, but here is solution worked for me.

Take electron.icns and extract icons by command: iconutil -c iconset electron.icns, you will get folder electron.iconset which contains all icons. Some of icons will look same as on your screenshots.

Replace broken icons: use good ones, resize and then replace.

Repack fixed set of icons by command: iconutil -c icns electron.iconset.

Use fixed electron.icns and set icon for Notion.app.

Here is doc for how to use iconutil

Oh, yes. Step 3.

It's then likely a corrupt system cache. There is a way to force the OS to rebuild the Finder desktop icons, but I don't know how comfortable you'd be with Terminal commands.

Oh! Sorry, I see what you mean now. The desktop icon is scrambled. My first guess would be the app somehow got damaged. I would simply delete the copy you have on your Mac now and download a fresh copy.

I found it mentioned here. Per their suggestion, a safety backup should be made before running the two commands shown. Which lastly is followed by starting in Safe Mode to clear some final cache items.

It's from 2022, so the commands should still be relevant in Sonoma.

Another possibility would be to reinstall the OS, which should replace these some items the commands remove with fresh copies.

Notion is not an Apple supplied app. It's third party. That is the correct icon for that app.

How did it get there? Someone with access to your Mac installed it.

Sounds like it's another entry for the Great Unsolved Mysteries of Life. Shows up on its own, then disappears on its own.

At least it fixed itself - somehow. 🙂