After a download, a compass/safari icon remains on the screen

Yay - found a fix that worked!

Background:

In High Sierra, when you click to download a file, High Sierra creates an animation/visualization of the file (via a Safari icon) being download, in a very fast-moving "n" shape. Starting where you click, going to the top of the window and then back down to the "Download" folder in the Dock. If you DON'T have your "Download" folder in the dock, High Sierra cannot perform the animation and hence the Safari icon just gets "stuck" on the screen.

Fix:

In Finder, right click on "Downloads", then click "Add to Dock"

"Download" folder now added to the Dock

It's been driving me crazy since the release of High Sierra, hopefully, this "fix" works for you too.

Possible Fix!

Just got off the phone w Apple Advanced Support and their suggestion seems to have worked (fingers crossed!). I did update to the latest High Sierra iOS yesterday.

Here's what we did:

1. Open Safari preferences

2. General Tab

3. Change File download location to desktop

4. Issue persisted

5. Restart the Computer

6. Open Safari Preferences

7. Advanced Tab

8. Click on Show Develop menu in menu bar

9. Goto Develop tab and Empty Cache, [Option] + [Command] + [E] keys

10. It worked!

11. Uncheck Show Develop menu in menu bar. (I was told you can really mess up Safari with the Develop menu.)

I included Steps 1-5 as the Apple Support Engineer said they weren't sure if this in combination with Emptying the cache somehow fixed the problem. Hope this fix is permanent and it helps all of you.

Spent some time on the phone with Apple support tonight. Long story, short: They had me update to High Sierra 10.13.3 and the problem appears to be resolved. Hopefully, that does the trick permanently.

For those who don't know how to initiate this update:

• Open your finder
• Go to the Appstore
• There is a button on the top that says update-click that and install 10.13.3

*You can also see what version you are currently running by clicking on the apple icon in the top right corner of your screen and selecting "About This Mac"

Hope it works, and hope this can help someone else out.

I broke the code, at least on my Mac Air (13 in, mid-2012) and iMac (21.5 in, mid-2011).

First, I added the Downloads folder to the Dock.

Next, in Safari settings I ensured the following was ticked off.

Now when I download, the grayed safari icon drops down into the downloads icon in the dock instead of the downloads icon on the safari toolbar.

That fixed it for me.

1. Does a restart resolve the issue temporarily?

2. Try another self standing version of Safari, Safari Technology Preview after restarting the Mac.

Download a safe application like EtreCheck. https://etrecheck.com

Does the problem reappear?

Safari Technology Preview.

This is another self standing beta version of Safari.

This version doesn’t have Debug option if you need to use.

To install Extensions:

Download extensions by entering the extension name in the search bar.

Download it.

Finder > Downloads

Right click on the filename.

Open with > Safari Technology Preview.

To uninstall STP:

Finder > Applications > Safari Technology Preview

Right click STP and choose “Move to Trash”.

https://developer.apple.com/safari/technology-preview/

After googling around, I found the answer for anyone still wondering: This icon indicates you have Apple's "Handoff" feature enabled — which opens the same browser window on your phone or other Mac device. This feature is enabled or disabled on Macs via System Prefs:

And apparently this is how you activate "Handoff" on an iOS device:

Various apps take advantage of this "handoff link" between Apple devices, so I think different icons display when you are using apps that sync to iCloud.

For details, here is the Apple Insider article I find which produced these graphics.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/04/18/how-to-enable-apples-handoff-feature-b etween-your-ios-devices-and-mac

For those who are still experiencing this issues, in Safari Settings > General, try to disable the option "New windows open with Tabs" by choosing any alternative. This function was causing the compass to become visible on any download for me.

Create another administrator account, logout, then login to your user account and test.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204443

It doesn't work.

This is a *BUG* affecting computers without Handoff but compatible with 10.13.x as this wasn't happening with 10.12

This is a brand new installation of the OS so cache removals, etc is irrelevant.

Definitely something to fix or stop using Safari.

I have been having the same problem since upgrading to High Sierra. I have also had problems with bizarre issues of font substitutions in some non-Apple applications. I have wondered if it has to do with the graphics card on my late-2013 iMac (NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1 GB).

A solution I have found is to use Firefox. I'm sure that is not what Apple had in mind.

Agreed, I misspoke, it's not a "fix" it's indeed a workaround. This workaround is great for users who want to continue using Safari without the Safari icon remaining on the screen after a download.

The "Download" folder that is added to the Dock takes up a very little amount of real estate in my heavily used Dock on my MacBook Pro.

For me, I am willing to make this slight trade-off to continue using Safari unencumbered rather than switching to a different browser that are inherently slower, consume way too much memory, and shortens my available battery time. I am patiently waiting for Apple to fix this problem, but in the interim, for me, it's a small price to pay for all the benefits Safari has to a Mac user.

On my Mac, this problem had disappeared recently, although I have no notion what it was that I did that made the change. But then a few days ago, I installed the High Sierra update, and now the problem is back again. Clearly this is buried in the OS code, and Apple is now re-creating a host of angry users every time it does an OS update -- an apparent admission by Apple developers that they do not understand their own code.

Having to quit and re-open Safari every time we do a download is absurd. Time to find a different browser that doesn't have Safari's problems?

Same here. This is definitely a bug in High Sierra. Has anyone seen if Apple is aware and are looking into it?

This is clearly a bug, those icons should not appear AT ALL on machines that do not support handoff

I have this same issue and was wondering where this is coming from.

I'm using Safari Version 11.0 (13604.1.38.1.6) and I just updated to the release version of High Sierra about an hour ago.

I've noticed that anytime I download something the gray compass logo appears on screen and doesn't go away. The only way I clear it is to completely quit Safari.

Does anyone have any idea why this occurs or how to stop it?