Time Machine: External USB icon DOES NOT change to green Time Machine icon

Right click on the TimeMachine icon on the desktop. Get Info will come up as an option, the third option down in the list.

Click on Get Info.

The Window Pane for Get Info will come up on your screen. Most often on the left.

At the very top left of this window pane there is a little green icon, the Time Machine icon. It will have the name of your Time Machine drive next to it.

Lower down, second from the bottom of that window, is the word Preview. It has an arrow next to it. Click on the arrow and it will show you a picture of a Green timeMachine drive. Hover over that with the pointer, and click your mouse button, keeping it down, drag that image up to the top and hover it over the little image at the top of the open window. Your actual TimeMachine name right. When you see the plus arrow appear ➕ let go the mouse, and you may have to type in the password, and it will replace your yellow icon on the main screen, with the Green Icon.

I had asked this same question in another thread, because I've got the same issue. If I shut down or disconnect my Time Machine (TM) volume from my computer and then reconnect, the drive icon remains orange instead of switching the green TM icon. Going into the settings and reselecting the drive fixes it. It remains fixed until the drive is disconnected, again. TM still functions fine. The only difference between your set-up and mine is that my drive is connected via FireWire 800. The behavior is identical. I have tried resetting TM (trashing the preference file) and there was no change.

This has been a bug since Leopard I think. Search Google or this forum board for "time machine missing green icon" and you'll get lots of hits. I have the same problem but it randomly starting losing the green icon in Mountain Lion (others report losing the icon in Leopard). So I don't think this is a cosmetic change in Mavericks but just a bug that's been carried over from previous versions of OSX.

Same here. For me, this has never happened until Mavericks. I'm inclined to disagree with the suggestion that this is a "carry over" from previous OS's.

Upon further investigation of this issue...I plugged my back-up drive back into my computer, yesterday, upon having disconnected it for a while. Instead of "fixing" the icon in the TM settings, I left it alone for a while to see what would happen. Turns out, the icon did, eventually, turn green after a few back-ups. Why it doesn't change anymore on the first back-up is anyone's guess. I guess this is new "feature" of Mavericks that we just need to get used to.

I've had the same issue since upgrading to a new MBP with Mavericks and getting a new USB 3.0 external HDD for Time Machine. Pretty sure it's just a bug and not what Apple intends. It's a Seagate Backup Plus portable drive.

Same here. Only happened since Mavericks. Hopefully it's a quick update at some point soon

I found on my Mini that TM will always stay green after normal shutdown and bootup. If I just do a soft reboot or turn TM off then back on the icon is orange but will change back to green after about an hour (probably at the next backup). Must be some Mavericks thing I guess.

I had a similar issue with the Time Machine icon not changing, which I documented here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5469706

Unfortunately, my MacBook wasn't making backups and I couldn't even make manual backups. Fortunately, your solution of selecting the disk fixed my problem. As mentioned above I assume that this is a bug that will be fixed soon.

Same here.

Mine is also oraange to start but when the next TM backup starts it turns green.

Same here - new behaviour since installing Mavericks on my mid 2011 20" iMac

This has only happened to me since changing the external drive for a new one when the old one broke. Running Mavericks the old one was green, new one just shows external hard drive image. Any fix?

Be sure your new drive is selected for TM to use. It will start out orange but at the next TM backup it will chnage to green. If you reboot it will change back to orange until TM does a backup again.

Hi guys, found a way round it. I can't see an apple solution out there but you can assign your own icon to the drive such as the TM icon by finding one via searching google images, then saving the image to your desktop. Find an online converter that will change it to an .icns file such as: http://iconverticons.com/online/

this will convert the file and then you can hit CMD + I to open up the time machine info panel and drop the .icns onto the small icon in the top left of the panel (not the biggy in the middle). Ive done this for all my external drives and the icon sticks like that until you choose to undo it.

Hope that helps.