Finder settings disappear with every restart: icons rearranged, background/desktop reset, etc. Why?
If I arrange the files/icons on my hard drive in a certain way that I prefer, and then set a desktop background picture, and do various customizations of the Finder, and then restart the computer -- poof, it all goes away after restart, and the icons are now all a different size, arranged in a standard alphabetical/default row, the desktop picture is now gone, etc. etc. This happens every time I restart. Drives me crazy.
What is happening? Why won't any changes that I make to the Finder persist from restart to restart? This has never happened to me before, on any computer, and any version of MacOS.
El Capitan 10.116, on an iMac.
iMac (2017 – 2020)