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Level 4

3,538 points

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

Hello all,

I notice the other oddity about OSX Maverick's Time Machine. Mine is an external USB3.0 hard drive attached to my iMac.

Subsequent start up and I notice the Time Machine hard drive icon shows the generic USB External Drive, instead of the Green Time Machine icon with a counter-clockwise white arrow.

Is this normal? The back up seems to be performing normally.

If I open Time Machine settings inside System Preferences, and 're-select' the disk again, it will change into the green icon.

Anyone else experiencing this? Is this another Mavericks' cosmetic change?

Thanks all!

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), iPhone 5s, iPad mini

Posted on Oct 27, 2013 11:52 PM

42 replies

Oct 5, 2015 9:38 AM in response to Señor Josué

thanks this worked for me too

Oct 5, 2015 2:21 PM in response to howwow

Another trick is to relaunch Finder (hold alt+right click on Finder icon). Green icon restored.

Oct 18, 2015 3:48 PM in response to howwow

I have found a simple fix to get the Time Machine to show green. Simply go to force quit and select finder and click relaunch. When it comes back up it will be green. I have a Mac Book Pro and I Mac that was having this problem. It has worked every time. Give it a try, Hope it works for you.

pkcid

Level 1

6 points

Oct 31, 2015 12:11 PM in response to geraldfromwichita

Thanks for that simple solution. Worked fine

Chris'74

Level 1

0 points

Dec 7, 2015 8:59 AM in response to Señor Josué

Thanks a lot Josué... Finally I've fixed it!!! 😉

IlDavo

Level 1

10 points

Jan 19, 2016 8:35 AM in response to Jeffrey Drood

To Jeffrey Drood (and all others who say "'this' helped me..."):What is, BY FAR, the most straight forward solution? What solution helped you? Many ideas are mentioned in this thread.

Context, please!

Finder->Preferences->General->de-select "External Disks" and then re-select it worked for me.

Thank you.

DD445

Level 1

13 points

Jan 22, 2016 4:01 PM in response to IlDavo

IlDavo, I had this same problem - and I guess it irked me more than it should have, lol. I simply did what geraldfromwichita did and the problem literally was solved in five seconds. Click on your desktop, open "Force Quit" (hold down the alt, command, esc key) and hit "Relaunch." My WD "My Passport for Mac" orange icon immediately turned to the proper Time Machine green icon. You gotta love it.

DD445

Level 1

13 points

Jan 22, 2016 4:03 PM in response to geraldfromwichita

Thank you!!

Jan 23, 2016 9:33 AM in response to howwow

This always use to annoy me but I seem to have found a tried and tested method that always fixes the issue. Whilst in Finder select the 'view' menu and then 'show view options'. Then select / deselect 'show icon preview'. I think upon each restart / update it pre-caches the Time Machine icon into memory and by selecting / deselecting the icon preview refreshes the icon. I hope this works.

Apr 17, 2016 7:05 AM in response to howwow

I have this same issue. I just updated to El Capitan And I used the methods to get the icon to be green. But this happens every time I start up my computer. do I have to go through this procedure EVERY DAY?

datico

Level 1

4 points

Apr 21, 2016 11:50 AM in response to howwow

I haven't seen the green icon now in a week. But reading through this thread I realize this is because it's a new backup drive, and Time Machine hasn't finished it's first run yet. Every day I log on to work, it copies a few more gb during the day, then I log off. I am guessing now that the icon will "stick" once it has completed it's first backup. It's darn slow about it though.

Sep 30, 2017 9:37 AM in response to alexdelalane

This works.

I used "Image2Icon" and dropped the .icns onto the small icon in the info panel of the disk.

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