Since upgrading to Tahoe (MacOS 26) some finder folders icons do not show in default finder view, even if they are of the same type as other folders in the folder.
This happens on any view - icon view, list view and column view
Please see the attached screenshot for an example (these are all shared folders, so should show the same icon)
Are there any settings I need to change to see these icons or is this a bug?
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 26.3
Hi there are other threads on this. If you go to Settings / Login items and switch off App Background Activity for any cloud-related apps (eg Dropbox) and then reboot you should find these folders reappear.
Turning these background services off will not affect their function unless you quit the apps.
Worked for me anyway!
Hi there are other threads on this. If you go to Settings / Login items and switch off App Background Activity for any cloud-related apps (eg Dropbox) and then reboot you should find these folders reappear.
Turning these background services off will not affect their function unless you quit the apps.
Worked for me anyway!
I had no problems (well the icons are a bit laggy sometimes) after doing this;
in SYSTEM SETTINGS search for 'Login'
Choose Login Items & Extensions
Find App Background Activity and switch off all your cloud services
REBOOT
You should find that your cloud icons are now visible. This method will not affect syncing to your cloud services.
However if you're previously disables your cloud drives you'll need to bring them back again.
A couple of other things to try are:
1) Safe Mode, as per > Start up your Mac in safe mode
2) Rebuild Spotlight Indexing, as per > Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac
Turns out it's a possible bug introduced in 26.1: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256198859. The fact it's persisting through MacOS 26.3 obviously means it's a high-priority issue
And PS yes, it's a persistent bug that hasn't been fixed yet.
HI,
I am seeing this situation on my 27" Intel iMac - MacOS 26.4 (t was happening before the recent update as well)
It affects folder, app, alias, URL, and drive icons. I cannot change any of those - I do have one on my internal drive, but the one for my NAS has disappeared and cannot be restored. Cannot add one to an external USBC drive. I have tried both standard ways, copy/paste and drag image, of adding them with PNGs, JPGs, and ICNS files.
I have disabled all cloud drive syncs except iCloud.
I have tried rebuilding permissions, re-indexing Spotlight, and checking the drive with DiskUtil
So far no luck
Thanks,
Eric
Here in the Apple Support Community, we are just other users like yourself.
To send feedback to Apple about this issue, you can use > Feedback - macOS - Apple
MacOS 26.4.1 fixes it.
I know, but if someone else had found a combination of settings or some command line-fu or even just holding the MacBook at a different angle that made it work, then I'd've been grateful. :)
Additional - I mounted my NAS drive on another Mac running an older version of MacOS. The custom drive icon did appear correctly on that system.
Eric
Missing Finder folder icons after macOS upgrade
