Where is my user icon / photo stored?

Russa, I took the photo when setting up my account. I did not use a photo I already had. I can't find it in the pictures folder and the recent photos drop down are all blank...

Tony, there is only one photo in ~/Library/Images/iChat Recent Pictures/ and it is a more recent one I took BC I can't find the one I want. There is also a file named Recents.plist

Thanks for trying to help guys! This one is really stumping me.

I have tried looking through my cache files, I have tried looking through my time machine back ups, I have tried looking everywhere mentioned above and still no luck...

Stephen

I have tried looking through my time machine back ups

Not sure how you browsed the TM backups, but if you haven't already, try:

In Time Machine ⇧⌘G then enter ~/Library/Images/iChat Recent Pictures/

I had a similar problem that my user account picture vanished when I upgraded to lion and became a default Apple icon - some boring butterfly. Thanks to Tony, I found it in

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iChat/Pictures/

Thanks,

Nick

I found mine in

Library/Caches/

with the name

com.appleuser501pictureCache.tiff

If it still exists you can find it with EasyFind. Download it for free from here:

http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

In EasyFind's searchbar, type

*501picture*

Select 'All Volumes' if you want it to search TM too.

In the left panel, check these options

Only Files

Unix-wildcards

Ignore Case

Invisible Files

If that doesn't find it, try just searching for

*.tiff

and sort it by 'Where' in the columns so you can rule out all the obvious ones at a glance. You can use 'Quicklook' in EasyFind too. Just click on any entry you want to check and hit spacebar.

EDIT: BTW, I'm assuming you took this picture when you did your set up. If you took it later it could be in Photo Booth; check out

~/Pictures/Photo Booth Library

Control click on Photo Booth Library and choose 'Show Package Contents', then navigate to 'Originals'.

Message was edited by: softwater

Looks like the answer has been found. It's not saved as an image file. It must be extracted with terminal code:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/44956/where-does-the-mac-store-account- pictures

I just put images into one of the existing folders in Library/user picture (like animals). Close out of system settings first, then when you open up to your account and click on the picture to change it, your custom picture should be there.

What I've found is that in Mountain Lion 10.8.2 the recent images are stored at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/Image s/Recent Pictures/

From your desktop click on "Go" then "Go to Folder" then type ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/Image s/Recent Pictures/

You can find and/or delete recent images here. If your goal is to clear recent images make sure to immediately restart the machine after deleting the images or else the thumbnails will reappear in the recents list.

I found this in trying to clear recent images showing up in Skype, Users & Groups, etc.

Thank You!

THAT was clever. Thank you very much! One of the most interesting questions on the site!

Same question, but for OS 10.7.5

Where would the user profile pic be stored in this OS version?

Under Mountain Lion I found it in the user library. Here is the file path.

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/Images/Recent Pictures/

Basically it's in the user library within the user library.

You can easily find the photo by going to Library

Press Alt (Fn + Option) while clicking the Go menu in Finder.

Search by Kind : Image within Library

I found mine in Library/Container/com...recent/Data/Library/Images/

Apple will keep changing these locations with every revision of Mac. So, the best bet is to use the neat search tool

under Library>Caches, i found my picture labeled: com.apple.user501picturecache.tiff.

Not sure what yours will be called, but if you have icon's displayed, the file should be obvious to you...

cheers

I recently got a new mac with Yosemite and had the same question. After poking around, I found this image without a file extension located in: Users/(my user name)/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Images/

There were only2 files in there, so i clicked each one to view in the preview pane. One was the generic apple image and the other was my photo.

I copied it to my desktop and renamed it "freedom-pic.tif" (NOTE that I had to add a file extension to the end of it so i chose .tif)