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'm having this problem too.
I have a bunch of files and folders in my home folder, arranged manually. They get messed up randomly by OS X Lion Finder.
the triggering cause seems to be when I Save a file in some app, via the Save/Save-As dialog box that pops up.
first, here's my setup:
My home folder's view options (Cmd-J) are set to:
- always open in icon view
- browse in icon view UNchecked
- arrange by None (i.e. manually arranged)
- snap to grid
- icon size 32x32
normally every time I open my home folder, all the icons are just where I left them (as they've always been for every other version of Mac OS I've used!)
now, here's how to reproduce the problem, at least in my case:
- open home folder in icon view - all icons are neatly arranged where I put them manually
- select all icons, do a View/Clean up selection, just to make sure they're all on-grid
- close the home folder
- open Mail app
- choose an email with an attachment
- save the attachment to the home folder, via the dialog box that pops up
- go back to the Finder, open the home folder
- now all the icons are messed up, many moved to different/random locations, many of them off grid, some of them overlapping other icons
perhaps others experience this problem can confirm if the Save dialog box is the triggering action in their case.
definitely a bug in Lion. very annoying.
Brett C wrote:
perhaps others experience this problem can confirm if the Save dialog box is the triggering action in their case.
Yes, that's what triggers it for me, too. It happens most frequently whenever I save an image from Photoshop to the Desktop.
I agree that the Save dialog box does somehow scramble icon arrangements. Also the Save As also seems to cause difficulties. I also find that icons are sometimes scrambled in directories starting at the the hard drive and going to the folder where a file is saved to. In other words, folders in the chain from the hard drive to the destination folder can also be affected. I have experimented with different settings in the Show View Options dialog box but nothing seems to make any difference. This would certainly seem to be a bug of some sort. Does anyone know what the "Browse in icon view" button does? I have become confused as to the distinction between "browsing" and just opening successive folders. Any ideas?
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.
I've got the exact same problem. And even worse: I often loose the Spotlight Comments of many recently saved files.
I, too, have found that OSX Lion thinks it is smarter that my iMac or me. I arrange my desktop to my liking and it will be fine for a day or two, sometimes a week and then it will arbitrarily and randomly rearrange the icons to an inverse alpha order. Frustrating. I have reloaded Lion to no avail. The problem does NOT occur on my other Macs. Just the iMac. Any suggestions?
Add my name to the list of those who are experiencing this problem...on both my MacPro and MacBookPro. This is very frustrating. I hope Apple fixes this soon!
I feel like Apple silently tabulates the furor of a mistake until a tipping point is reached. Then, and only then is there even an acknowledgement that they are considering a remedy.
I very much like the product. What I don't like is the "we are God and answer to nobody" attitude, until that tipping point is attained.
Until then, it's a "feature", right? Call it "Lion Diversity Finder Array Displacement".
I don't know if it will do any good, but I did submit this issue as a bug with Apple. Hopefully, they will have it fixed with one of the next updates to Lion.
In the meantime, I do know that leonfromalexandria's solution using a terminal window and the sudo cp .DS_Store DS_Store does work to quickly restore your icons.
Not quite. When I am sure that a window is opening correctly, I use
sudo cp .DS_Store DS_Store
to make a backup of the .DS_Store file. To fix scrambled icons, I do the reverse command.
sudo cp DS_Store .DS_Store
You have to be in the particular folder for the above. In reality, I have set up an executable script that simultaneously restores a bunch of folders executable from my home directory. That is where Terminal starts from.
Same problem; it is annoying. Haven't been able to solve it. Fortunately, it doesn't affect me much. But, I can see how it might cause some to tear their hair out.
Same here. But only in my "Home Folder"..
Pretty annoying.
Knock on wood, but it appears that today's update to 10.7.1 has done the trick for me. I resorted dozens of folders that have consistently scrambled since upgrading to Lion, and all of my icons have maintained their positions so far, despite my doing all the sorts of things that have previously triggered a scramble, including logging out and restarting. Has the update fixed the problem for anyone else — or, conversely, is anyone still having the problem under 10.7.1?
I'm on 10.7.1. Still have the same problem. It even seems as if it occurs more often now..
Running 10.7.1, no joy. Icons still loose their positions.
Same problem here. :-( Really hoping this gets fixed soon.
How do keep folder icons from rearranging?
