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How do keep folder icons from rearranging?

Since upgrading to Lion, icons in various folders keep rearranging themselves. I arrange them manually but the arrangements don't always stick. Some folders are ok and some are not. Deleting the .DS_Store folder does not seem to help. Ideas?

Posted on Jul 25, 2011 10:22 AM

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121 replies

Aug 2, 2011 4:47 AM in response to Whiteman007

I had the same problems with 10.6. I don't remember about 10.5. The problems went away in 10.6 presumeably since I kept setting the "Always..." flag in the appropriate way. I am now seeing if this works in 10.7. So far, things have improved significantly. I also have always set the second browser flag. This new setting implies that the format of the .DS_Store file may have changed. Time will tell if any of this really works.

I have a work around for the few folders where the icon positions are very important. When I know they are opening correctly, I save the .DS_Store file in the folder with the command


sudo cp .DS_Store DS_Store


in the appropriate location. When my icons go south in a folder, copying the stored file back saves a lot of work.

Aug 2, 2011 9:43 AM in response to Whiteman007

That is similar but I never use the browser view so I don't know the correspondence between what I see and the movie. I always use the "spatial" view and icon or list withing that view. Spatial in this context means non-browser (non-tool bar and non-side bar). I just open and close disk drive and directory windows. In this context, I sometimes find that the icons have moved when a folder or disk drive is reopened. Actually, I recently opened all my key folders where the icon position is important, opened "show view options," set "Always open in icon view," set in "Browse in icon view" and close the view options window. Things have been stable for a while. We will see.

Aug 9, 2011 7:37 AM in response to leonfromalexandria

I tried the .DS_Store files, but haven't been able to successfully make the restore work. Do you have to be logged in as root in order for the replacement file to actually take effect?


I ended up taking one of my folders and just sorting it by "Label" and using the silly color labels. Its not perfect, but at least its not rearranging them every 30 minutes.

Aug 9, 2011 8:30 AM in response to ej85039

Generally, I have to use


sudo cp .DS_Store DS_Store


and provide my password to store a good file. To restore, I use


sudo cp DS_Store .DS_Store


and a password. In the above, you have to be in the directory involved. Otherwise, you have to do something like


sudo cp /Volumes/data.b/.DS_Store cp /Volumes/data.b/DS_Store


for backing up where data.b is one of my volumes. Longer paths would be necessary for more deeply nested directories. Hope this helps.

Aug 10, 2011 8:56 AM in response to leonfromalexandria

I can chime in here as having the same issue the moment I upgraded from SL to Lion. I have some project folders that I have very carefully managed in icon view that are getting shuffled inconsistently throught the day. Initally, I moved all the folder items and got everythigng layed out as it was, but stopped doing this once they kept getting scrabbled over and over. I also noticed that sometimes the view options removed the checked boxes for "View by Icon"- really weird. I REALLY hope that this issue is fixed in an OS update soon. Has anyone heard if this is being recognized by Apple and planned on being addressed?

How do keep folder icons from rearranging?

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