MacOS 26.4 update broke custom icons on my Intel iMac

Apr 9 2026 ➜ CUSTOM ICONS ARE BACK ON INTEL MACS!

The macOS 26.4.1 update released this afternoon—and just installed by me—has returned visible custom icons to my Intel Mac.

You won't read about it in the release notes, but the missing icons fix was included.

That was a 16-day turnaround since the bug was introduced, so I do credit Apple for not making us wait for the future macOS 26.5 release—which is likely more than a month away.

I assume you don't use the status line at the bottom of a Finder window. It would show a pencil with a slash, indicating you don't have permission to write to the root directory of a volume. And this happens for Apple Silicon and macOS 15.7.5 as well as macOS 26.4 Tahoe users. Either call it a bug or a change in policy at Apple. If you want to fix it, Get info on the drive's icon, click the little gold lock at the bottom of the Sharing & Permissions: section and put in your password. Then click the + symbol near the bottom-left to add a user. Add yourself. It will then show a fourth row of users and groups with your shortname followed by "(Me) Change the Privilege to Read & Write. That should solve the problem, unless you share the drive and the Mac with another user. In that case, I would imagine you want to add, not you, but Administrators.

Same thing on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro (Intel). No amount of restarting, repasting the icon into Get Info or adjusting permissions has fixed it. I think this is a Tahoe 26.4 bug that only Apple can fix.

zafarjafree wrote:

Subject: Custom Folder Icons (PNG) Disappeared and Cannot Be Re-applied in macOS Tahoe 26.4

sir:

Hello,

I am writing to report a persistent issue I’ve encountered after updating to macOS Tahoe 26.4.

The Problem:

Before the update, I had several folders with custom PNG images set as icons. Immediately after the 26.4 update, all these custom icons disappeared and reverted to the default blue folder icon.

You can provide Apple with product feedback here:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Is this a known bug in version 26.4?

To people on this forum, it is a known bug. You posted to page #3 of this thread and there are at least two other much longer threads on this forum.

However, we have no idea if Apple actually knows about the bug which is why people should be notifying Apple directly since Apple is not here on these discussion forums. These forums are just regular users assisting other users. Apple does not participate in these forums.

You can provide feedback using the link I provided and/or contact Apple support & make an official ticket with them to solve the problem as long as you keep escalating the issue until it reaches the engineers.

If anyone has found a fix or a workaround to restore custom folder icons, please let me know.

Thank you.

From what I've gathered from the posts on this forum, the custom icons are still intact, but are just not displaying on macOS 26.4. When people view the files/folders with customized icons on an older version of macOS, those customizations appear to be intact.

This looks like a macOS 26.4 bug rather than something Intel-specific. Custom icons rely on Finder/metadata handling, and updates sometimes break that temporarily.

You could try:

• Restarting Finder (Force Quit → Finder → Relaunch)
• Clearing icon cache (restart often helps)
• Reapplying the icon after copying it again

If it persists, it may need a fix in a future update.

Are you seeing this on all files/folders, or only certain ones?

I can confirm on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro (Intel) that updating to Tahoe 26.4.1 resolves the missing custom icons issue. Thanks Apple!

26.4.1 Fixed the bug!!! My icons are back.

What they (Apple) have done is make the folders take on the tag colours, so if you tag a folder say as RED, you'll get the red dot beside the folder name, and a RED folder. You can also add a faint icon image by using the "Tag Customize Folder" feature (right click and go down to the tags section of the contextual menu:

Downsides for me are:

1. Lost all my custom folders/special icons;
2. You are limited to the seven standard colours;
3. You can't customize the colours (my older folders had subtler shades made by IconXprit);
4. List views have an annoying column of colour dots that I don't need or want, especially if the folder has multiple folders inside with different colours because you get a cluster of dots showing all the contained folder colours;
5. The icon images on the folders are very faint and so for the most part useless if you want to use them for quick recognition (notice the guy on the bike - you may have to squint to see it):

6. You can no longer add customized images for say a project specific identification;

1. Tag colours won't change the colour of a document icon, and you can't past special icons to documents either.

The change in and of itself isn't necessarily wrong, and can be useful (years ago I hated when they went to tag dots instead of colouring the folders - that was a long time ago, but way back you could colour your folders). But they should still allow pasting of custom icons as an override to this new feature.

Hooorayyy... 26.4.1 Update fixed/ revived ma custom icons!!!!

Confirmed. Icon bug seems to be fixed on my Intel Mac with macOS 26.4.1. Rejoice.

Thanks for confirming. I think this helps narrow it down. Since it’s affecting different Intel Macs and even server shares, it does point strongly to a macOS 26.4 bug rather than anything machine-specific.

The fact that the icon paste “registers” (changes size/date) but doesn’t display suggests Finder/icon cache isn’t rendering the custom icon correctly.

You could try restarting Finder or a full reboot, but given your testing, it’s likely something Apple will need to fix in an update.

Good call logging it with Apple. Hopefully more reports like this get it addressed quickly.

Same computer here, same problem.

I have 50,000+ custom icons on my files & folders.

I installed last week's new macOS Tahoe 26.4 update on my 2020 Intel iMac and my 2021 M1 Apple Silicon MacBook Pro.

Last night, I copied all of my 50,000+ files from my iMac onto my "My Passport for Mac" external drive, and then I attached that drive to my MacBook Pro, and copied those same files to my MacBook Pro.

Here was the result:

• 2020 iMac ➜ icons not visible
• My Passport external drive ➜ icons not visible
• 2021 M1 MacBook Pro ➜ ICONS VISIBLE

So, the icons are still there—they got passed on to the MacBook Pro—even though they were NOT visible on either the iMac or the external drive.

Those icons have been in use on my Macs for around 20 years; that certainly makes you wonder how far someone had to go out of their way to break something like that.

I phoned the 800 Apple phone number today (8-28-26) to make a bug report on the issue, four days after the release of the Tahoe 26.4 update. Neither rep that I talked to said they had heard of any previous complaints regarding the issue.

The reason that I had to talk to 2 reps is that the first one sent me a required email message, which provided a link for sending attachments that show before and after screenshots of the icons that I use. The first Apple Support email message that I received had the correct case number, but stated macOS Sequoia. I had only mentioned the macOS Tahoe 26.4 update as the starting point of the problem. The 2nd rep sent a new email, and it also stated macOS Sequoia. Finally, a 3rd email message was sent to me, and it finally stated macOS Tahoe. Not a minor point!

Seems like a lot of "mistakes". Mistakes = lost time for me.

I hope they expedite a fix for this, to put it mildly.

[Edited by Moderator]

pstKSU wrote:

MacOS 26.4 update broke custom icons on my Intel iMac (Retina 5k, 27inch, 2020, 3.6 i9). I also cannot paste custom icons onto files, folders, or disks.

Anyone else seeing this? Is this Intel Mac specific?

Yep. Seems to be a difference. Always something changing...

I notice it on right side of the Dock, custom folders.

Control click and change to Stack, add an image is a work-a round in this case.

can file a bug report / submit your feedback here: Feedback - macOS - Apple

Apr 9 2026 ➜ macOS 26.4.1 update CUSTOM ICONS ARE BACK ON INTEL MACS!

Me too!!!

Thank you!! 😊

Same here and, in my experience, is an Intel-only bug. Since updating to Tahoe 26.4 all my custom folders, shortcuts and aliases are gone. This only happens on my iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020 Intel, while on my M1 MackBook Air everything works as before. It's a mess as I customized more 20 icons and now they look different from one Mac to the other. For what it's worth I have sent feedback to Apple.