Finder refresh issues and Time Machine drive icon

I wrote:

What works for me to change the Time Machine's desktop icon from the yellow generic one back to the blue TM one is this two part process ...

UPDATE: after quite a bit more experimentation, I discovered what works for me is my step two from the earlier post -- no need to run First Aid first -- BUT it only works after at least one TM backup has occurred since restarting the Mac or logging into your user account.

So my revised workaround is this:

1. Wait until a TM backup has completed.

2. Open Finder's preferences to the General tab

3. Toggle off & then back on the preference to show external disks on the desktop.

The desktop TM drive icon should immediately change to the blue TM one when you toggle back on the preference. This should persist until you log out or shut down the Mac.

This has consistently worked for me for several days & many restarts. I would like to know if it works for you as well.

gfs2008 wrote:

That did work for me too. Thank you. Hopefully it won't revert back after several restarts.

For me, it reverts to the yellow icon after every restart. But as long as I wait for at least one TM backup to occur first, it only takes a few seconds to open Finder prefs, do the toggle, & close the pref window. So basically, my OCD issues with the yellow icon only occur briefly, once per restart. 😝

amstel78 wrote:

@R C-R,

Your workaround is just that - a workaround. What you're doing is essentially forcing the Finder to refresh the desktop drive icons. It's the same as if you killed the Finder in terminal and restarted it.

Not exactly. I tried killing & relaunching Finder & for me that doesn't change the icon, even after several TM backups have occurred.

What should happen with a properly working Finder is after a reboot, the drive's icon will remain yellow until TM has completed its first backup after system restart.

That isn't quite the way it has worked on my Macs running any OS X version I have used prior to El Capitan. For me, doing anything that 'touches' the TM drive, like a Get Info or opening it, would set the icon to the blue TM one, even if no backup had occurred since it last started up.

amstel78 wrote:

How did you kill the finder? There's two ways of doing it. One is through terminal by typing killall -KILL Finder. The other is by quitting Finder through the GUI after entering the following in Terminal: defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool YES.

Doing either of the above kills and restarts Finder thus forcing it to refresh and applying the correct desktop drive icons.

I know about & have used both methods. Neither has resulted in the TM drive icon being restored on my Macs running 10.11.1. Neither has logging out & back in, which kills Finder along with everything else running in my user account domain.

boblishman wrote:

Simply using Force Quit/relaunch finder always changes the icon for me. I found this the easiest way to placate my OCD 😕

Does that work for you even if no TM backup has occurred since you last started up your Mac or logged into your user account?

I try to avoid force quitting Finder when possible because like when force quitting any other application it doesn't do any 'housekeeping' a normal quit would perform. That includes not just saving open files (which obviously does not apply to Finder unless a copy or move operation is in progress) but also updating caches, preferences (including for Finder windows last state variables), & so on.

Everything should be set right on relaunch but sometimes that doesn't seem to occur, occasionally leading to some odd behavior.

Just something to think about.

R C-R wrote:

Does that work for you even if no TM backup has occurred since you last started up your Mac or logged into your user account?

No. There needs to be at least one new backup since logging on for this to work, but I always thought that was the correct behaviour for the icon (i.e the icon changes from orange "generic" hd to green TimeMachine after the first new backup since logging on). I didn't have an external hd backup with Mavericks ... only since Yosomite.

boblishman wrote:

... but I always thought that was the correct behaviour for the icon (i.e the icon changes from orange "generic" hd to green TimeMachine after the first new backup since logging on).

FWIW, I have been using Time Machine for backups since it was first introduced in OS X 10.5 Leopard. To the best of my memory (which these days admittedly is not as reliable as it was in those days) the TM volume always showed the distinctive TM icon on the desktop immediately after logging in to any user account set to show it there. At some point that changed, but I am fairly sure it was in a recent version of OS X.

As for me I have the same problem for Aliases icons and not only on my desktop, but also in folders as well as with external TM drive.

I think it was introduced before El Capitan for TM and with El Capitan for the aliases (my 10.11.3 (15D21) version doesn't change a thing)

Okay, so I found a fix that worked for me after I've tried every single fix proposed on here. What I did was look up the icon logo in the Resources folder:

/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/

Once there scrolling down one should find the GenericTimeMachineDiskIcon.icns file, open it. Then while in preview Edit > Copy.

Now right click on your disk file on desktop or in finder and use the Get Info method, and your copied icon should be in clipboard now so in top corner click the annoying yellow logo and then Edit > Paste... OCD gone, life can go on ✅

Well, it won't let me give you a star even though I'm logged in, so I'll just say "You're a Star!" and let you know it worked as advertised and even given a restart.

For the sake of those who don't know, right-click or Ctrl-click on

CoreTypes.bundle and

Having a generic icon for TM just didn't set well with me.

Saved to Notes for future generations.

Great under the hood detective work! 😀

Gene

Using gfs2008's solution of going to Get Info and adding user and read/write permissions in combination with Force-Quitting the Finder and running a manual Time Machine backup brought back the Time Machine icon for the external drive used for backups.

Yup, updated to 10.11.1 as well and still no fix.