Invisible / Transparent Dock Icons

I realize this is a 5 year old post, but I just had this issue, so its still relevant. I don't believe this post cures the problem, but cures the symptom. There are too many other factors that don't make sense.

Now I will say, that all of the icons Ive had do this, do seem to have iCloud ties to them, but I believe thats a coincidence, based on when this problem started for me.

This started when I went into USERS and GROUPS in the System Preferences (Gear Icon), and under START UP ITEMS I started finding double of things, so I put checkmarks, took out checkmarks. One of those may have been a 'helper' item, so its possible iCloud helper was turned off, or hidden?

I went back and took out all doubles, and took out all checkmarks because they HIDE items. So far, so good.

Thank you so very much for the excellent fix in regard to the 'invisible' url.png in the Dock. I too had this problem and it drove me mad for hours trying to repair it. Followed your well worded post and now have the icon back in my Dock again.

Well done and thanks again.

Yes. Thanks for the tip. I (Like Keith) spent many many hours working this issue.

You Solution worked like a Pro ( which I believe you are).

Thanks again.

Paul - Yes I believe it has something to do with the iCloud and Safari Syncs. I have iCloud set to sync Safari bookmarks and it happened on both my 12inchMBA and my IMAC. Does Apple monitor these posts?

Regards ...

Don Kjenstad

@psLogic et al.: Thanks for your suggestions - they tipped me off and doubtless saved me a lot of troubleshooting time. Another straightforward fix - I discovered after googling several instances of this problem - is to do a "Safe Boot" (hold down the Shift-key while rebooting). Presumably this forces a flush of various system caches - theorizing that, for whatever reason, corrupted files have made it into the cach(es) for quicker redisplay on reboot? This definitely fixed the problem.

This problem was also cited on MacRumors forums, 23 Sept 2009. I think that pre-dates naescent iCloud. 🙂

Thanks so much, I have only just upgraded to Lion and this has been driving me mad.

by the way, i was able to fix my "invisible Safari dock icon" problem with a different, also simple method. perhaps you guys had tried this and it didn't work, but this worked for me:

- launch Safari

- in the dock: ctrl-click the (invisible) icon

- in the popup menu: click OPTIONS and turn "Keep In Dock" OFF

- quit safari

- relaunch safari (from the application folder, or from spotlight)

- the icon reappeared

I had this issue of invisible icons for the Skype application. I resolved it by:

0) Remove Skype from the Dock (rt clk, options, remove from dock)

1) Shut down

2) start-up

3) loaded Skype from the application folder

4) locked it back into the dock (rt clk, options, open at log in)

No further issues.

Perfect. Thanks very much for the help 🙂

You're a genius!

It also worked perfectly fine for me (under 10.9.4)!

Thanks a lot for your help!!!

Lately this solution didn't work anymore with my new MacBook Pro... (I have no idea why).

But here is the solution that worked for me: in Terminal, just type: killall -HUP Dock

It worked just fine for me...

Just updated to Yosemite and this starting happening on my dock after deleting some files. Worked like a charm. Thanks 🙂