All of my desktop icons periodically disappear for a second and then reappear on my macbook air

This just started happening to me tonight, on two computers. Seems that everyone has started noticing it tonight. So, I set up an account for my son on my late-2010 MBA. After, on my account, I started watching a movie on HBO Go. every so offten, about minute or so, Mavericks would return me to my desktop from full screen. After rebooting, the problem continued. Then, when working in Preview, the same thing happened, making it impossible to fill out a form.

I figured it might have someting to do with the new account, so I went to my desktop to research a little about how to properly wipe the account.

While looking on my mid-2010 27" iMac, I noticed the same issue. The screen / Finder resets every minute or so.

I have GoogleDrive on both machines. I'll try to remove it from the MBA and report back if there are any changes.

Yep, the suggestions on Google Drive did the trick. I wonder why this just showed up today?

Conformation. I started having this problem within the last couple hours. I also turned off Google drive and it appears to have stopped. Thanks a lot fo the help.

Did a GDrive update just occur?

I'm not sure why it just showed up but that is annoying. I have 200 users using Google Drive for Education and all have Mavericks.

It doens't hurt anything unless you are in the middle of copying a large file, it kills the copy half way through.

Thanks to jimmyrin, I can also confirm that I now have google drive running properly once I shut off the "show file sync status icons".

*Edit*
I havn't tried transferring large files, however the desktop icons no longer "flicker" and finder seems to be stable now.

Message was edited by: fwmaietta

Just adding my own two bits. This issue started for me today as well (noticed it at 8pm this evening EST). Killing the Google Drive Sync display as mentioned in ann earlier post has taken care of the issue.

Very odd.

Had the same issue, so far turning off Google Drive's "Show file sync status icons" seems to have solved the problem.

Google Drive uninstalled for now.

Thanks! All is well and flicker free! 🙂

I am so glad I found this thread. This started happening to me about 4 hours ago. It's really crazy-making. How do I change the settings in Google Drive?

Can someone tell me how to close google drive? I am having the same problem, started tonight at around 8pm. Thought it was my computer glad to see that I am not the only one andmy computer isnt getting ready to die.

Just started happening to me in the last half an hour what is going on? I will check out the Google drive issue but i didn't think mine was active.

You shouldn't have to completely close Google Drive. At the top right of your screen you should see the Google drive icon. Click on that and then choose preferences. Then click the checkbox that says "show file sync status icons", make sure it us unchecked. Once you've done that, your computer should work as it was. Maybe quit google drive and restart just to be safe.

Unchecking the file sync icon status checkbox seems to have worked. kudos to whever figured that out - i was stumped.

Thanks, seems to have worked. so glad I found this forum. Phew!!!

I started having this problem around 9:00pm. I can confirm that shutting down Google Drive and removing it from Login Items stopped the constant Finder crash / relaunch cycle. I have not verified the Show file sync status icon trick as I no longer want this software on my MacBook Pro.

Microsoft SkyDrive is actually a better solution (and I am NOT a fan of Microsoft).