Empty Finder folders don't display correctly in Mountain Lion

Just wanted to chime in and note that I have this issue too. I thought I had some kind of an SSD issue at first, despite the fact that the correct directory structure appears in Terminal. I am relieved that the workaround of switching views shows me that I'm neither losing my mind nor struggling with a disk corruption issue.

This occurs on the brand-new Macbook Air (Mountain Lion patched to 10.8.1) that I received yesterday, fresh from the factory. No hacks, completely plain-vanilla setup. I've reported this as a bug online, and plan to call Apple Support tomorrow to log a formal case for this.

I've logged this as a bug with Apple Support. The steps to reproduce this problem are:

1. Open Finder, set the view to Icon View.

2. In any folder (e.g. Documents), create a new folder.

3. Doubleclick on that folder. The view doesn't refresh, although the Path Bar reflects that you're now in the new empty folder.

4. Switching to any other view (e.g. List View) and then back to Icon View refreshes the display, showing the empty folder.

Although the problem is easily reproducible, I'd still encourage everyone to report this to Apple independently. If you don't have an Applecare contract, you can still report a bug here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Yes, that is indeed what happens in my case, but I've just checked it on a 2011 iMac and it is not affected by this bug, so it appears the problem can't be reliably reproduced on all machines.

Same here on a 2012 MacBook Pro. Also, has anyone else noticed a problem with Safari? After upgrading to Mountain Lion, the title bar and the bookmarks bar both are darker than the rest of the bar. It is very frustrating!

I had this problem, but since today it works fine. I don't know what I exactly did, but the problem is gone.

I've just uninstalled Xmarks for safari today 😕

I cannot reproduce this wacky problem. Usually stuff like this is due to incompatible third party software. Does this bad behavior persist

(1) For all users? For example, the Guest user?

(2) In Safe Mode?

charlie

I don't think it is possible to boot into safe mode with File Vault 2, since the process is interrupted by a log in. It appears to be a problem on some computers, but not others.

The problem exists in all user accounts, but empty folders on the desktop behave correctly.

I don't see the problems on a guest user account I created.

Also, if I open the empty folder (so that my folders are jumbled and un-selectable) and I drag a file into the Finder window, I see a blank window like I should. But I still don't know why this happens.

I also have this problem, but . . . I didn't notice it until after I installed "iDocument" and tried it out. Don't know if there is any relationship or just coincidental, but it also saved an empty folder for iDocument in the same folder in which I experienced two of the empty folders "syndrome".

Has anyone else used "iDocument" and the empty folder issue?

I haven't used iDocument. I didn't even know such a thing existed. On a hunch, have any of you guys used SideEffects to make a colourful sidebar possible in Finder windows on ML or Lion? I have, and it's the only thing I can think of that might trigger such odd behaviour.

I've got it on two stock ML installs, no plugins, nothing fancy.

Yeah, others have said something similar. I only mentioned SideEffects in case some of the people affected by this strange bug had forgotten installing it. The oddest thing, it seems to me, is that it only affects some computers and some users.

Count me in for having this strange behavior too. It happens on all 4 Macs that I use (all were recently upgraded to Mountain Lion): a mid 2011 27" iMac, a mid 2011 21.5" iMac, a mid 2011 11" Air, and a late 2009 Mini.

Same problem on a 17" MacBook Pro. Just realized the problem now. I went back to an old backup with Lion and no such problem, this only occours with Mountain Lion. I noticed that this only applies to empty folders. Put one item into that folder and it opens normally.