Why are my dock applications turning into question marks after restarting my macbook pro?

You could try removing the dock's plist and replacing the icons.

The file is com.apple.dock.plist. Find it by opening finder, click Go on the top bar. Hold option on the keyboard and click library in the menu. Then navigate to preferences.

Reboot.

Have same problem... not sure it happened every boot but at least twice in one week. Eventually left my shortcuts on desktop.

When they go grey, it means that they have lost the location of the application that they represent.

If you put your mouse over each one, it will tell you what application it is that it has lost.

Go to wherever you have that application stored, usually the applications folder, and drag the icon of the application down into the dock. A new icon is created for you.

Repeat with the other two grey icons in the dock.

To remove the grey icons, left click and hold while you drag the icon out of the dock and onto the desktop. Release the mouse button and the icon will disappear in a puff of smoke.

they are only applications I have installed myself off the internet. It never happens to the applcations that came with my macbook, or apps from the mac app store. I have not moved the location of the applications i installed

So where do you install the apps you downloaded?

If you just drag them to the dock, they aren't really "installed". The dock just contains aliases to the application. You need to either use the app's installer and/or drag the actual app into your applications folder (double click the downloaded .dmg image and then click on the "install" icon or drag the app into the applications folder). That is where apps should be installed. You can then drag the icon into your dock for easy access.

You two may want to check the date of the post you're responding to.

Thank you. That worked for me.

Thank you. That worked for me.

Thanks so much. This helped me restore all my Chrome App doc icons to working order. They all stopped working after I had to re-sign into all my Chrome instances.