All desktop files snap to upper left corner off screen. How do I fix this?

I have this problem also.

I looked for the files in ~Library/Preferences mentioned to trash, but couldn't find them. Are they not in Lion?

I tried the trick of Setting the Sort by to None. It worked for one icon moving, but then the next snapped up to the corner.

Does anyone know what to do about this?

If you need to get to your Library/Preferences try holding down he option key then select the go menu item in the finder. You should see the Library folder.

I wish people would give complete instructions when trying to help on this forum.

Turns out the names of the files are com.apple.helpviewer.plist.lockfile and com.apple.helpviewer.plist. No wonder I couldn't find them under "h".

Any how, I trashed all the files mentioned, but still had the problem.

The only way I think I've solved the problem is by choosing Sort By > Date Added instead of None.

This Kool-Aid sure deosn't taste as good as everyone says. Sorry I ever switched...

I was also having the exact same problem and finally found a solution (at least for me!).

(1) Follow Mary's suggestion above i.e. Control + Click anywhere on the desktop, scroll down to "Sort By" and select "Date Added". This will of course arrange (or re-arrange) the files on your desktop by date.

(2) Move some files from other folders over to your desktop. These will automatically be arranged by date.

(3) Control + Click again on the desktop but this time under "Sort By" select "None".

This fixed the problem for me.

Go to System Preferences.

Click Display Icon.

"Detect Displays" on bottom right hand corner.

Try dragging files onto your desktop.

Viola! =)

I have tried all the above including talking to Apple Geniuses at two different occasions who told me to do a clean install of the operating system. Since this is impossible for me due to too much stuff accumulated over the years, I installed a new system on an external hard disk just to try it out. So this is a clean OS X 10.8.3 installation and the problem still exists. There is something wrong with the OS that affects some of us and not others, guess we are just the unlucky ones and hopefully this will be addressed along with a lot of other Mountain Lion problems with the next 10.9 upgrade.

Open any window and make sure the sidebar is showing. The sidebar is an area on the left side of the window that lists favorites, devices, etc. If it isn't visible, make sure the window is selected (i.e. the frontmost window) then select View>Show Sidebar. The sidebar should now be visible on the left side of the open window "Desktop" should be listed in Favorites. Locate and drag & drop your files onto the Desktop favorite and they will appear on the desktop, but not in the extreme upper left corner.

Thanks quicksilver21! This worked for me. :-)

It's under 'View' and then "Sort by' on my Mac (latest version OS).

Unfortunately, Quicksilver's fix didn't keep on working. I just tried the same fix again and it didn't work this time. :-(

i owned my imac for a year before apple even fixed the Lion bug where i turned it on and it would open my recent programs!! and i had it unticked to not open them!!

i also cant get safari icloud tabs to work and this forum is full of people telling me to turn private browsing off ect lol,

and now im here wondering why items i drag onto my desktop are going into the top left corner,

seem to remember windows did the same thing about 10 years ago lol

not going to say anything bad about apple products because they delete your posts, seem to remember someone else did that to people who disapproved of their views 68 years ago

I have been having this issue as well.

Have tried various solutions suggested across multiple threads with this topic, and nothing worked...

I asked my programmer husband, and he asked the simple question to me:

"Have you tried using Safari?"

I'm a steadfast Chrome user, so I had not.

Opened Safari, tried dragging and dropping, and lo and behold, the behavior had reverted to dropping images where I wanted to (instead of snapping to the upper right).

So far, I have seen no one else mention their browser of choice. Just thought I would post this to see if somehow this is a Chrome issue, and not an OS X issue at all.

Any thoughts, anybody?

(FWIW, I am not switching to Safari just to drag-and-drop properly. There needs to be a solution that doesn't require me switching to what I consider an inferior browsing experience.)

When you are in the finder click on the view menu item and select Show View Options, the view options window will open then go to the Sort By pulldown menu within the view options winow, next slect None.

Should do the trick.