(High Sierra) Dock Icons get missing at all the time

This is a silly workaround, but here's what I did:

Go into the applications folder, and pick the app whose icon is not displaying properly:

Drag it to the desktop to create an alias:

Drag the Alias that has the correctly displaying icon to the dock:

Then remove the old icon that is not displaying properly.

I only had 5 icons that were not displaying when upgrading to high sierra, so it was not too cumbersome.

Cheers,

🙂T

My icons were disappearing from my dock after High Sierra also.

An Apple Support Senior Advisor had me.

In Menu > Go (press option) > Library > Preferences

Find and remove "com.apple.dock.extra.plist" and "com.apple.dock.plist" then restart.

Seems the preferences for the dock were messed up. Hopefully this helps.

I'm only after updating to High Sierra and yip the icons are almost all gone.

Can you tell me where I will find:

"In Menu > Go (press option) > Library > Preferences"

I've been looking in finder, system prefernces.

I was having the same issue.

What worked for me:

Booting up the computer in safe mode. Then simply restarting the computer.

So how to do that?

1. Fully turn off laptop.

2. Then turn on your laptop while holding the shift button (you will be holding the shift button for about 1 minute)

3. Your laptop will boot up then in safe mode (note that the screen may flicker...and may be of poor quality)

4. Once you're at the log in screen, you can stop holding the shift button.

5. Log in to your computer.

6. At this point, for me at least, all of my dock icons were restored on my dock.

7. Then I restarted my laptop and logged in as I normally do. (Meaning powering up my laptop without holding the shift key this time)

Let me know if this works! Good luck

The magic begins when you go to /Users/Toaster/Library/Preferences, search .dock. I found strange strings and using different cmd (thanks google) nothing seemed to work. The most important thing to do is to empty your trash.

Files I found, Before:

After purging plists (and emptying my ***trash***)

My Dock has successfully changed Position. Will preform a reboot.

(Last, Yes I named my laptop Toaster and my main computer is a fridge. Also IDK why I don't call apple care... I have 2 more years... lol).

I am having this same issue of icons dissapering ever since I updated, this is a very annoying issue that needs to be resolved ASAP. Does anyone know how i can fix this for the time being? Ive tried kiling dock command nothing seems to work.

In my case has been fixed booting in safe mode.

After boot in safe mode, I restarted again the laptop as usual and the icons were restored.

Follow this link to know how to boot in safe mode.

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support

Hello Folks,

as most of you know by now, nothing really helps. Safe start - only a temporary fix till it comes all back.

However, i recently installed the COMBO UPDATE to High Sierra 10.13.2 to fix some other issues.

And lo and behold - the icon bug seems to have gone for good. At least since the combo update i didn't have to run any esoteric terminal commands or perform safe starts or nvram resets.

I suggest you try it, too. Go grab the appropriate COMBO UPDATE Laden - macOS High Sierra 10.13.2-Combo-Update

Cheers.

Thank you for posting Orlando!

Just a small clarification for Rashdude...

1. Choose the Finder. (E.g. click the mouse on your screen background wallpaper.)
2. When in Finder, go to the menu bar at the top of the screen.
3. Choose top level menu Go
4. While the Go menu is displayed, press the option key to show hidden directories.
5. Choose the Library folder
6. In Library, find and open the Preferences folder
7. See the rest of Orlando's solution.

This solution (mostly) worked for me. I couldn't delete the com.apple.dock.plist file even though I'm an administrator. I had to use the terminal. Note that this solution reverts the doc to default format, including default apps, configuration, and behaviors. If you only have a few missing icons, I'd recommend TA_Allen's approach below.

Neither of the top two solutions worked for me. I ended up figuring out another workaround.

• Remove the original, missing icons from the dock
• Opening up the applications from your applications folder
• Once open, right click on the application in the dock
• Click on Keep in Dock
• Voila

This is an old bug, very old bug. It has to do with Launchservices going crazy. Typically a problem if you run a system utility that manages system level caches (only similar to browser caches in that they optimized repeatable events on the system). If you run any system utility that cleans the system cache, remove it now.

Use http://www.etrecheck.com/ to find out what is installed on your system, that we may determine if you are running any utilities that mismanage the Launchservices. Copy/paste its results to the forum.

First go to disk-utility, choose first aid and run the check.

Second go to SystemSettings - User and groups, delete everything in Loginobjects!

Restart your mac pressing shift and then a normal restart again.

Now your problem is hopefully fixed.

Thanks for the note but it didn't work. Just how "High" were these engineers. Maybe they hired some Microsoft engineers. It screwed up my Creative Cloud app and my dock icons, now I am waiting for EFI print drivers friendly with 10.13.1. I have always said Apple would eventually become the useless bureaucracy they were always meant to be. I've told all the Apple users I supervise in our corporate communications department to delay their upgrade to High Sierra. I guess now I have to call support. Very nice people but it is still a hassle.

Check out Clear Mac OS X's icon cache. · GitHub @

SteveJobzniak

I've discovered that the BEST, most RELIABLE way to rebuild the icon cache in macOS is to right click the app, "Get Info", drag ANYTHING to its icon in the top left of the "Get Info" window (you can drag a FOLDER to its icon if you want to) to assign a new temporary icon....

I was having the same issue.

What worked for me:

Booting up the computer in safe mode. Then simply restarting the computer.

So how to do that?

1. Fully turn off laptop.

2. Then turn on your laptop while holding the shift button (you will be holding the shift button for about 1 minute)

3. Your laptop will boot up then in safe mode (note that the screen may flicker...and may be of poor quality)

4. Once you're at the log in screen, you can stop holding the shift button.

5. Log in to your computer.

6. At this point, for me at least, all of my dock icons were restored on my dock.

7. Then I restarted my laptop and logged in as I normally do. (Meaning powering up my laptop without holding the shift key this time)

Let me know if this works! Good luck