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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?
I don't think thats what were talking about here and i have found how to make the icons randomly change here the video explaining
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQp5kraLL8M&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Yep, Same here and it's driving me nutts. I have my icons scambled several times a day.
Here is a reference I found that tells a lot. I'm not sure it solves all issues but it is illuminating.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/12#divided
Thats is 3 years old and this wasn's a issue with 10.5 or 10.6 but it is with 10.7
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.
I should have mentioned that the reference I found was part of a review of Lion so I assumed that the discussion applied also to Lion. Here is the URL for the more current article.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars
Heres a video of what i'm talkign about not sure if this what your saying or not
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRhfKPwTKXs&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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.
This was such a nightmare that I have reverted to Snow Leopard. Lion has some nice features but I simply can't work with my icons rearranging themselves. I need to know where to find folders, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to stay where I put them.
So frustrating. I'd like to add that I also experience this bug. Icons has never rearranged themselves like this.
@leonfromalexandria - has that worked? Have the icons rearranged? I have had to redo my main folder up to 5 times in one day and its driving me nuts!!!
Nothing has worked so far. I have stored the correct .DS_Store files and rewrite them when necessary. Hopefully, Apple will fix this problem soon.
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.
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.
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?
