Can't add favorites in finder sidebar

Hi magsls.

Here is a possible fix:

Hover your mouse over the word "Favorites" in the OS X Finder and then click on the word "Show" that appears.

Odd, after dropping in here to see if I could find a solution to the missing Favorites on my sidebar and after having fiddled with it for several hours berfore that, after I left my initial message i opened a new Finder window and voila! Favorites was back with al my folders. Media is still missing but that is of little value to me and if I need those items I can always make them favorites. The only answer I can think of is the ghost of Steve Jobs fixed it.

"1 - I force quit Finder

2 - I relaunched Finder and Favorites was back!"

Does not work for me. I upgraded to Mavericks and have been running it about a week without this problem. Did nothing and all favorites disappeared.

Any more ideas?

Hi Jim,

I'm using 10.8.2. I've tried everything you suggested with no success. When I try to click the items listed under Favorties in the Sidebar tab of Finder Preferences, the check mark immediately disappears. Dragging an item over like you suggested, such as Desktop, results in a blue line over Devices, almost like it's trying to add the Favorite above Devices, but it doesn't ever do anything after releasing the click. See this image:

The idea doesn't work if for no other reason "Favorites" no longer appears as a header on the sidebar. Only Shared and Devices are visible.

I amso dependent on this featue that it's taking me forever to find anything.

The oddity is that when I save any item the window appears and lo and behold all the favorites are displayed in the sidebar of the save selection window. But on any other finder window they have gone missing and as soeone pointed out it's not even possible to select the checkboxes in Finder preferences.

I've seen suggestions to trash the finder plists in the Library but I have searched and searched the Library Prefernce file and can find no finder-related plist. Is this a hiddne file?

Thank you, death.ray!

I had cloned a drive to a bigger (1TB) one to use in my Mac Mini, and couldn't see any folders in Finder windows, nor could I add any to the sidebar (with or without Cmd-dragging). I was getting quite 😠 frustrated about this, until I found this topic (and specifically your suggestion to Force Quit the Finder). I did that, and voilå! There are my favorite folders again.🙂

Thanks!

Jim

I'm experiencing the same issue -- can't add my Favorites back into the Sidebar in Finder -- but death.ray's suggestion of Force Quitting Finder hasn't helped. The only thing I'm able to see on the Sidebar is devices. Quite frustrating!

Brian, try going to Finder -> Preferences and click on the 'SIdebar' tab at the top of that window. Hopefully, you should be able to add other folders. Also, if you have folders you want to add to the sidebar for Finder windows, first navigate (in an open Finder window) to that folder (and double-click to open it), then click and hold on the folder icon at the top (where the folder's name appears), and while holding down your mouse button, drag it into the sidebar.

Also, are you using Lion, Mountain Lion, or an earlier OS version (like Snow Leopard)? (Not totally sure, but there might be some differences in 10.7+ vs. 10.6)

Hope that gets you on the track for what you need.

Jim

I am having EXACTLY the same problem as rgharrison and BrianGTBC. I rely heavily on the Sidebar throughout my day. I find it odd that Apple doesn't address this fix in an update.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

I had the same problem, Favorites wasn't shown in finder windows, and when attempting to select the checkboxes in Preferences, they would only flash checked for an instant before becoming unchecked again.

Relaunching finder and restarting the machine, then relaunching finder again did not fix it.

Based on gbipot's suggestion to do it twice, I relaunched it two times in succesion. Back to normal now!

An easy way to relaunch finder is to hold the option key down while you right-click the finder icon in your dock. The option to "relaunch" should be one of the menu items.

Very weird bug!

-Ryan

I was able to solve similar problem.

Issue:

I could not add one specific folder Movies. Nothing worked for me: tried force relaunch, delete plist files, all kinds of drag'n'drop, check box in Finder preferences.

Solution:

Apparently there was an issue with permissions. So 1) in terminal I became root (sudo su) and 2) moved folder to a safe place (used mc manager - no terminal commands here, sorry guys). it will be handy later. 3) create new folder with same name in old place as user ( NOT ROOT! - to create it with user permissions) 4) copied files .DS_Store and .localized from from backup to the newly created folder 5) force relaunch Finder 6) PROFIT

Now MacOS considers it system folder, but dragging and check box in Preferences work fine

I have a related problem. While I am able to add favorites (to use as shortcuts) to the sidebar (for folders I am currently working on), when I go to sleep or shut down, it removes some of the favorite. In other words, when the machine starts back up, the favorite is missing.

I'm noticing that this is only a problem for favorites that are not on one of the internal Mac drives. So shortcuts to folders that are part of the Mac itself reappear, but folders I've added as shortcuts for folders on my external drive are NOT reappearing as shortcuts in the Favorites Bar even though that external drive is on and operating. So, I'm having to re-add them each session. This seems to be af fairly recent problem, I've used shortcuts/alias/favorites and years and I don't remember ever having to re-add them repeatedly like now.

death.ray solution worked for me.

My question is, is this a bug in finder? I can't remember doing anything that made the "favorites" disappear and suddenly the check boxes in the preference can't be enabled while I can with "share" and "devices". Weird.

Thank you so much, gbipot. My Favorites disappeared from my Finder window sidebar after reinstalling Mountain Lion. I followed your advice.

1 - I force quit Finder

2 - I relaunched Finder and Favorites was back!

Thank you so much. Oh, the mysteries of OS X.