why folders disappear from finder sidebar in mavericks?

In the finder click the view menu and chose "show sidebar" then you should have the word favorites. You may need to expand the view if the list isn't showing but the sidebar is.

I also found that to add alias' to a sidebar that doesn't seem receptive you need to make sure the link is active first, then you can drag the alias over to the sidebar.

The only thing I've been able to do to mitigate the issue is to always make sure I connect to the server I am using before opening the finder or clicking on any of the favorites in the sidebar.

I opened this thread before finding this one... Network Folder Removed from Sidebar if Clicked and Not connected to Network

+1 for keeping one network folder in your dock, as it doesn't dissappear when the resource isn't available. It's just a case of remembering to click that before visiting your finder window sidebar.

I recommend anyone with this problem to file a bug report here:

]https://bugreport.apple.com/logon

Apple does not seem to patrol the forums and you're voice may not be heard here.

I have filed it and it doesn't take long. If enough of us do, perhaps then we will be heard.

I thought I would try with the new 10.11.4 update to see if dropping the favorites is still a problem and guess what? It is! So far this week I have replaced them 3 times. I've tried deleting the preferences, I've tried replacing the finder preferences with one from when it was right. It didn't matter it still loses my favorites.

The only "fix" is to use aliases that are stored locally and put them in the favorites. This solution is good with the exception that you cannot drag things on top of aliases in the sidebar and have it copy to them.

It doesn't lose the favorites until halfway through the work day. What's ironic is they are still there in open and save dialog boxes. They are gone in Finder. Once I reboot then they are gone from the dialog boxes of apps too.

This is so annoying. It affects my computer more than some of the others, but it still happens.

The only solution I have found is to make a folder and put aliases in it and then put those in your favorites.

It's funny because I have three computers that have no problem with putting the shares directly in the favorites. I have two macs that will lose them within two days of putting them in. They all run the same OS (10.11.4). Two of them are even the same model. All are on the same network. The computers that lose them will just drop them even after being connected to the network shares for the first half of the day. Suddenly, during use they just go.

Deleting the finder preferences made no difference and neither did restoring finder preferences (copied after they were all in place) and then restarting Finder. I also tried to have the computer auto mount the server by putting it in user's login items. It didn't help and only gave errors. BUT it has worked for others, so you could try those options too.

Correction. Logging out and in did not fix it, but restarting after doing the above did fix it. Just to clarify if others have the issue.

Creating an alias helped me in Mavericks, by putting the alias(es) in a folder (originally on my desktop) in the sidebar.

I have spent many frustrating hours talking with Applecare for the last six months, There is no indication that there is any fix. The last answer I received was they were "Investigating it."

My setup is much like Erick's.

MBP running 10.9.2

MacMini running 10.6.8

NEVER had any problem with any previous version of OSX.

Latest comment I received from Greg (an extremely knowledgable and helpful guy) at CityMac in Traverse City MI was that there might be some conflicts between SMB and AFP protocols. On my Mini I have the sharepoints set up to allow both protocols. He suggested I run a test with AFP only and SMB only. I have not had a chance to do this but one would think that the Apple engineers would have tried it in the last six months.

As a former software developer it particularly galling because this just does not seem like that difficult a problem.

During my last regular monthly call I was told that the engineer wanted a Quicktime screen capture of the event. Cannot imagine that would be any help. Sort of like a camera watching a light bulb until it burns out never to come on again.

I have sent them about 3 or 4 data dumps that I captured right after it happened but that did not result in any progress.

Sigh...

I have got the same problem.

I have a shared folder called Groups on my 10.8 server.

I have some subfolders of that share in my favourites, and they disappear quite often. (mostly when I reboot when not at the office)

I now try to use Connect to... (CMD-K) to connect to the subfolder directly (using addres like afp://10.0.x.x/Groups/foldername) and drag that mount to my sidebar favourites.

Will report back if that works.

I found that restarting nmb or smb on the file server makes it re-appear in finder, I'm guessing it's something to do with OSX removing the drive if it hasn't seen any packets from it, in my experience it always disappears when the mac has been asleep.

If I might offer my humble opinion:

This very frustrating issue probably stems from an earlier OS X problem with the Sidebar. Do you remember that if you dragged a folder to the sidebar to create the shortcut but then deleted the original folder/item then you couldn't delete the link (unless you re-created a 'dummy' file so that you could delete the sidebar link first)?

This seems like a rather heavy-handed attempt to make sure that if any source folder is 'deleted' (i.e. network shortcut not automatically mounted) then the link is immediately deleted. [Try it with a folder on your desktop then delete it]. Very clumsy.

Folder of Aliases works well for now.

Not the issue. That hides the entire column section. This concerns Favorites that are dragged to Favorites sidebar from a server. Local Favorites links remain, but when you disconnect and reconnect to the server, the server based Favorites vanish. It's a PITA.

1) I confirm this bug on a rMBP Mid 2014 with a freshly installed OS X 10.9.5 where sidebar links to folders residing on external volumes disappear.

2) Very sad to hear that this bug is still unfixed even in OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

3) @NDchemE 's workaround hint to CMD-drag to the sidebar did not help it.

4) I tried other workarounds as well, but none of them was reliably fruitful:

• Make sure that the Finder has a or no window with one of the linked folders opened, then unmount.

  —> No reproducable workaround affect.

• If you have an external storage medium with multiple volumes, try "Eject" or "Eject All"

  —> No reproducable workaround affect.

Use different volume eject methods

• Methods
  • Eject via side bar
  • Eject via dragging from desktop to Trash
  • Eject via dragging from a Finder window at root level to Trash
  • Eject via selecting volume and issuing eject shortcut (CMD-E)

Sometimes one of the mentioned workflows caused the links to remain in the sidebar, to only disappear at a later time.

I could not reliably isolate the bug, meaning I could not clearly determine cause and effect.

I've been coming across this issue for the last couple of months, running a Mac OSX 10.8 server and some users (not all) experiencing loss of finder aliases, i've been following forums and pulling my hair out.

Today I came across an issue with another client, I did a clean rebuild of Yosemite and reconnected to server via Finder. This user was still having permission issues on Photoshop after a clean rebuild.. The server permissions to photoshop file were correct, another user in the company with same permissions having no issue writing to file.

We found that Finder on the newly rebuild yosemite machine is connecting to the Mac server using SMB: automatically, this was confirmed after doing a "get info" on a file on the server giving us the full path of the file showing smb://192.168.1.x

My understanding is that finder should connect automatically using AFP? So after a clean rebuild why is finder connecting as SMB automatically? Nothing wrong with AFP on the server and the other user who had no issues saving is connecting automatically via AFP on her finder.

I had to force this newly rebuilt machine to connect via AFP so then my thought is are disappearing aliases caused by finder connecting to the server between AFP and SMB randomly? If a user is creating an alias one day connected via SMB to a folder then another day Finder connects as AFP could that be the cause for the alias to disappear?