Every once in a while—it could be weeks or months, but it has happened many times—the favorites from my Finder sidebar just disappear, and I have to manually re-add them. I've asked about it before, both to an Apple adviser and in this forum, and no one seems to have any idea of why it happens, or how to prevent it from happening.
Does anyone know why it happens and how to keep it from happening over and over again?
iMac 27″, macOS 14.4
mccarlson wrote:
Every once in a while—it could be weeks or months, but it has happened many times—the favorites from my Finder sidebar just disappear, and I have to manually re-add them. I've asked about it before, both to an Apple adviser and in this forum, and no one seems to have any idea of why it happens, or how to prevent it from happening.
Does anyone know why it happens and how to keep it from happening over and over again?
If it is a corrupt plist list— delete the com.apple.finder.plist and rebuild the sidebar
Finder>Go>Go to Folder copy and paste:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
reboot or from the >Force Quit>Finder>Relaunch
mccarlson wrote:
Every once in a while—it could be weeks or months, but it has happened many times—the favorites from my Finder sidebar just disappear, and I have to manually re-add them. I've asked about it before, both to an Apple adviser and in this forum, and no one seems to have any idea of why it happens, or how to prevent it from happening.
Does anyone know why it happens and how to keep it from happening over and over again?
If it is a corrupt plist list— delete the com.apple.finder.plist and rebuild the sidebar
Finder>Go>Go to Folder copy and paste:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
reboot or from the >Force Quit>Finder>Relaunch
mccarlson wrote:
I did follow your directions, and this morning, a mere 18 days later, it happened again. All of my carefully placed favorites are gone from my sidebar. I wish I understood why this keeps happening. Does a plist get corrupted that often or that quickly that I keep having to deal with this?
No, something is not right. I have never encountered your re-occurring issue.
To trouble shoot further you can:
—A SafeBoot Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies
Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled.
Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.
This test will tell you if third party interference; most extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.
—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support
This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account.
unplug all non-essential peripherals when testing
Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus
all known to cause issues on the macOS
no insight or resolve—
Call Customer Support (800) MY–APPLE (800–692–7753)
or on line https://getsupport.apple.com/
Outside the USA—Contact Apple for support and service by phone
See a list of Apple phone numbers around the world.
Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support
Thanks for your help!
I don't know how to tell if it is a corrupt plist or not, but I followed your directions, deleted the plist, and restarted my computer. I guess I won't know if it worked until my favorites disappear again, or until they never disappear again. I re-added them all by hand once again.
Adding to the mystery to me is that this happens only on my iMac but never on my Macbook Air. Why do you suppose that is?
Mark
I did follow your directions, and this morning, a mere 18 days later, it happened again. All of my carefully placed favorites are gone from my sidebar. I wish I understood why this keeps happening. Does a plist get corrupted that often or that quickly that I keep having to deal with this?
Favorites in Finder Sidebar Disappear from Time to Time