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

I had the same issue. I resolved it.

Steps:

1. Quit application
2. Right-click in dock > hover over options > select remove from dock
3. Open launchpad and drag icon to the spot you'd like
4. Fixed!

Cheers!

For those wondering how to access the library folder, you can open your terminal application (command + space, then type in "terminal" and open it). In the terminal, type "open /Library/Preferences" to open the preferences folder, then you can delete the 2 files mentioned in the other answer.

I would perform what many here don't like but always gives me a stable and reliable machine every time I apply an update, minor or major: deep and complete cache cleaning with (in this case) Sierra Cache Cleaner.

HTH.

Great tip. I used this tip to simply Remove the icons from the dock, then drag the icon back from the Application folder.

Worked for me.

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).

You are correct: it is not a fix, I described creating aliases as a temporary work-around to be able to visually distinguish which icon is which in less than five minutes. For me, being able to tell which is which was enough to get on with my work and put more time into a full solution at a later time (as many others have been provided above). This is only a band-aid for people like me who didn't have time to do the necessary backups etc, before trying other solutions.

Many thanks to the others in the community for the more detailed solutions!

Cheers,

:)T

You can even choose the real icon from the app. Go to Applications > Show Package content (of the app) and you should find the icon in Contents > Resources

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.

YES!

The LOL Game app - not the Launcher, but the actual game - is always the first app to show this erratic behaviour!

This might be a good hint for the bug-hunt. I will check this with the Riot player support.

Anyway - can you give any further details?

I did this today and it worked. My FaceTime icon, App Store, and photos icon messed up. Rebooted as stated above and the icons were restored! Thanks for the share!

It's not in System Preferences.

Go to Finder and hold down the option/alt key while selecting the Go menu item. Select "Library".

I don't know about you, but my contact with the Apple support told me the problem was the game League of Legends. Anyone can confirm this?

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.

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

In my case, remove the preference files do even worst.

Now some icons that were displaying properly are missing.

Reminders, Messages, FaceTime, Pages, Terminal icons are missing into the Dock and even into Launchpad.

I am using Macos High Sierra updated from Macos Sierra.