Cannot add location to sidebar in finder open/save

And as mysteriously and suddenly as the problem began, it has vanished. All my usual locations (whcih I put there months, maybe a year, ago) are back and I can add. Re-appeared after shutdown and startup, but that's only be done a dozen times with no effect recently.

Sigh.

I suspect it was some form of corruption that was corrected during the power-on disk check/fix process. For my music server (Linux based, NUC) I periodically have to shut it down and restart several times successively to correct accumulated errors from power losses (hard shut downs without journaling).

My only guess (speculation alert, but informed speculation since we know it self corrected) is that something similar has occurred. Does not speak well of disk utility that I could run it several times and get a clean bill of health, if there was in fact corruption. Not sure to what degree it is simply a front end to Unix routines...

Maybe this will help someone who encounters the same thing.

thanks but no, that's just the boilerplate stuff to turn on and off categories -which i have done.

I will note that this raises another odd behavior (from memory, again i will double confirm) - that when i turned on, for example, to show my home location (/users/me) that never happened either. So regardless of whether i dragged folders or the finder, through prefs, did so in the background, it seems to not do so.

Again, from memory so i will confirm. but i would assume this is a bug or corruption - why I ran disk utility against everything (volume, container, device).

OK, I restarted in safe mode and tested. No change.

1. cannot add locations to sidebar in finder window
2. Cannot change what appears in sidebar in finder window via system preferences

Welcome to buggy land. Surprised I'm the first and only to encounter this.

thanks to all for ideas.

yes. Keep in mind it was working fine and suddenly stopped too (and what was there was gone). Weird....

You are just referring to revealing the items. I am talking about trying to add items to the list and the4 item "jumping back" - essentially rejecting the action.

Hmm. Somehow I missed this.

One by one

What model and year is the problem Mac?

--> 2017 Air

Also what model and year are the others?

--> Various: an M1Pro, M2 15" Air, 15" 2011 (running open core and Monterrey), most are running on OS back from current

Are all running the same system?

--> See above. All fairly recent - but all ought to operate the same way on this feature

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

--> That would be a "**** no"

Since diagnosis and segmentation is always good i will run that experiment.

But... this machine has no 3rd party software on it that the other 4 don't, so i can't see how that is the issue.

good thoughts. I will test. Thanks.