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

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.

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

I had this issue on High Sierra after updating with the latest security patches. To resolve it, I restarted the Mac, holding the Shift key when I heard the chime and booting into safe mode. Once in safe mode you will see the icons are there, you can then restart and allow the Mac to start normally and all the icons are restored.

I tried deleting the dock plist file and restarting my computer but it didn't help me; the app icons were still missing in the dock.

To fix each missing app icon, I removed the icon from the dock and then added it back. To do that, I

* Right-clicked the icon in the dock, then clicked Options, then I made sure Keep in Dock was unchecked.

* Then I closed the app if it was open. At this point, the app with the missing icon was no longer in the dock.

* Next, I opened the app (using Spotlight, the magnifying glass in the top right of the screen). Now that the app was open, its (correct) icon was on the right side of the dock. I then dragged the app icon to the left to where I wanted it in the dock so that it would stay in the dock.

I did that for the 5 or so apps that had been missing their icons. So far, all the app icons are still correct.

by the way, I had this issue when running macOS 10.13.2 High Sierra.

good luck!

Howie

Remove the applications from the Dock (click and drag them into your desktop area and they will be removed), then re-open the offending applications via Finder or Launchpad and reselect them to "Keep in Dock".

If this does not immediately fix it, go to Macintosh HD -> Library -> Preferences and remove "com.apple.dock.plist" and "com.apple.dock.extra.plist" (you may not have the "extra" file). Then restart your machine and repeat the process above (ie remove and reselect to keep them in the dock), if it has not already self-resolved.

This did not work for me. "com.apple.dock.extra.plist" was not on the list, but "com.apple.dock.plist" was. Removed it (sent to Trash), emptied Trash and rebooted. Still had the problem (only with two programs, Malwarebytes and FinalDraft, but I use them both regularly and they looked the same.) The solution that worked was from TA_Allen (see below). Drag the icon from Applications to the desktop. Then drag it from there to the dock. Then delete the offending generic. (Thanks TA_Allen!)

I only had the com.apple.dock.plist file. I found it by going to Finder --> Library --> Preferences

After deleting this file, and restarting, the logos in the doc all reappeared correctly.

note: The default Apple Apps (like pages, numbers, facetime, photos, etc) will all be back in your dock, so you'll have to re-remove them and shuffle the icons around. But this process worked for me.

MacOS High Sierra version 10.13.3 running on MacBook Pro Retina 15-inch

What did the trick for me was to simply restart in Safe Mode (press the shift-key while restarting). Damaged icons showing up again in Safe Mode. Then restart normally.

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.

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.

Its in Finder and the solution worked for me... i only had the file "com.apple.dock.plist" but removing this, shutting down and restarting worked for the dock... launchpad has a similar problem, but i rarely use it and will sort that later

I cannot believe how often people think that removing the icons then re-adding them will solve anything.
Yes, the icons reappear for some time.

BUT THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM THAT APPLE HAS INTRODUCED IN HIGH SIERRA IS STILL THERE.

High Sierra tends to scramble the caches in some weird ways. It's mainly the finder/dock cache, but also the launch services.

Neither resetting NVRAM nor starting into SAFE MODE nor messing around with the ICON CACHES will permanently and definitely solve the problem. It always will pop up again at some point.

Installing the COMBO UPDATE made the problem go away, but after the latest "security patch", it's back again.

I also suspect it has to do with hibernation and how caches behave before sleep and after wakeup , but that's another topic.

APPLE has seriously messed around with cache behaviour, permissions and maybe the relativity theory to address some serious security issues, but it turned out to spoil the party in some weird ways.

The only reliable workaround we have to this date is to start into SAFE MODE by pressing the SHIFT KEY during startup, then restart into normal mode and hope, it takes some time for "High"Sierra to get stoned again.

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

Actually the only solution that worked for me with 10.13.1was this one Clear Mac OS X's icon cache. · GitHub