How do I fix disappearing alias icons in Finder on Mac?

h. paul wrote:

On my Mac Air M1 running Tahoe 26.1,

the icons to aliases on my finder and finder windows persistently disappear

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Disappearing alias icon

Alias to what and where?

Old issue, new issue, what changed?

h. paul wrote:

Aliases to apps, folders, documents, whatever. Started with Tahoe

You have shut down and restarted more than once since your 26.1...

>Shut Down

This is all on your internal drive(?)... no external drives involved.

Where are these Aliases, Finder Sidebar, Dock ...?

Old issue, new issue, what changed?

What was the macOS before your recent macOS 26.1(?) the point-update or a full macOS upgrade?

There are more than one way to create Alias

See if there is anything here: Create and remove aliases on Mac

You can drag about anything to the Finder Sidebar as well as the Dock...

A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - 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 temporarily.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

No resolve—

reinstall macOS on top of your existing macOS for upgrade issues

Recovery (both M1/M2/M3/M4 and Intel) — How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support