Desktop icons flicker on Mavericks

I recently upgraded to Mavericks on my 15" MBP early 2011. Not long ago I installed some free apps from the App Store but i'm not sure if this is causing the icons on my desktop dissapear for half a second and then again appear, like some sort of flick. My system is up to date. I restarted the system and uninstalled the recently downloaded apps but it still flickers... It's very annoying!
Thanks in advance for any help provided.

Searching in the forum I found possible solutions to our problem:
Desktop Icons winking in and out after Mavericks install
Refresh Finder Mavericks
Hope this helps!
Cheers.

Similar Messages

How to change icon images in Mavericks?

I am having difficulty changing some Desktop Icon images in Mavericks.
Some times I can (Macintosh HD), sometimes I cannot (Applications folder or alias), for example.
Never had problem prior to 10.9

To change your Applications folder icon:
In Finder, press shift-command-G, paste in the following and press Go..
/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ApplicationsFol derIcon.icns
Change the name of ApplicationsFolderIcon.icns to ApplicationsFolderIcon.icns.backup
Confirm this change by selecting Use .backup and enter your password
Move the .icns file you want to use for your Applications folder and rename it ApplicationsFolderIcon.icns
Enter your password when prompted
Restart your computer, open Terminal, type
killall Finder
and press return.
You should have a new Applications folder icon.
To revert, delete the new file, change the name of the original file back to ApplicationsFolderIcon.icns and follow the rest of the steps above.
[NB: This change may not stick through future OS updates]

Have just installed Mavericks and restarted the MacBook Pro. That was 3 hours ago and after logging in, I got my wallpaper and dock, but none of my desktop icons, just the spinning coloured wheel. It's been like that for 2 hours. Is this normal? What shou

Have just installed Mavericks and restarted the MacBook Pro. That was 3 hours ago and after logging in, I got my wallpaper and dock, but none of my desktop icons, just the spinning coloured wheel. It's been like that for 2 hours. Is this normal? What should I do, please?
I tried holding the on/off switch down to make it shut down, but when I turned it back on again, the same thing happened and none of the keys etc makes any difference.
HELP!!!! Please.

No, what you're experiencing is not normal.
Try booting whilst holding down the Shift key - this will allow you to boot into Safe Mode, disabling third-party kernel extensions, etc. Your Mac will be slow to boot and will operate sluggishly. That's normal. If you can get in using Safe Mode then you have some start-up item that doesn't play well with Mavericks.
Call back,
Clinton

Greyed/multiple network server desktop icons in mavericks on mavericks server

We have a new Mac Mini Server running Mavericks Server and all of the Mavericks clients are ending up with multiple server share icons on their desktops. All of the desktop icons will become greyed so you cannot click on them. We have rebooted the server and the Macs but the problem keeps coming back. Getting this error when trying to eject the icons "Share Name is a partition on a disk that has 2 partitions. Do you want to eject Share Name only or both partitions?" Any ideas?

Let me ask this a different way. Can someone try the following and tell me what result you get for Step 5?
Given: A workstation running Windows 8, joined to a domain on a network.
Given: A server (Active Directory Domain Controller) running Windows Server 2008 R2. (Not sure the server's OS matters; it's Windows 8 that matters.)
Step 1: Create a dummy text file (or other dummy file) on the Windows 8 workstation.
Step 2: Create a shortcut to the dummy text file on the Windows 8 desktop.
Step 3: Edit the shortcut's properties and change the icon, selecting some icon file (e.g., WHATEVER.ICO) located on the Windows 8 workstation.
My Result: The icon displays correctly on the desktop shortcut.
Step 4: Now copy the icon file and paste it somewhere on the server.
Step 5: Change the shortcut's properties to look for the icon on the server where you copied it to.
My Result: The icon displays correctly in the shortcut properties window, but once I apply the change the desktop shortcut displays a "blank document" icon.
Note: The type of file the shortcut points to is unimportant-- you can try it with a TXT, DAT, EXE, COM, or any other type of file. The issue is with the shortcut's icon, not the shortcut's target.
Interesting Aside: If you change the shortcut so the target is the ICO file itself, the icon is displayed correctly.

Fix Desktop Icons in Mavericks

After updating to Mavericks last week, my desktop icons went crazy - stopped letting me move them around or snap to grid - I solved the problem by resetting the "snap to grid" desktop feature and all seemed well for a while. But now random "grid" places on the desktop won't allow me to move icons there, and it's only random places as far as I can tell. It was just two for a while but now it seems to be for other places as well - I want to be able to arrange my desktop icons however I want without needing to rearrange them completely every time! Anyone know how I can fix this?

I have the same problem. Another thread says to play with the icon size and grid. Nonsense. 10.8 didin't have this problem.

Mavericks 10.9.5 Unable to move desktop icon. Sort By = None.

ON version 10.9.5 Mavericks.
This was working but the past few days is no longer.
I am unable to move a desktop icon (i.e. drag it and move it into another folder, etc).
View/Sort BY = None.

Take these steps if the cursor changes from an arrow to a white "prohibited" symbol when you try to move an icon on the Desktop.
Sometimes the problem may be solved just by logging out or restarting the computer. Try that first, if you haven't already done it. Otherwise, continue.
Select the icon of your home folder (a house) in the sidebar of a Finder window and open it. The Desktop folder is one of the subfolders. Select it and open the Info window. In the General section of the window, the Kind will be either Folder or something else, such as Anything.
If the Kind is Folder, uncheck the box marked Locked. Close the Info window and test.
If the Kind is not Folder, make sure the Locked box is not checked and that you have Read & Write privileges in the Sharing & Permissions section. Then close the Info window and do as follows.
Back up all data before continuing.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo Desktop
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. You should get a new line ending in a dollar sign ($). Quit Terminal.
Relaunch the Finder.
If the problem is now resolved, and if you use iPhoto, continue.
Quit iPhoto if it's running. Launch it while holding down the option key. It will prompt you to select a library. Choose the one you want to use (not the Desktop folder.)

I want to change the font six on my desktop icons. I am using Mavericks iOS 10.9.4.

I want to change the font six on my desktop icons. I am using Mavericks iOS 10.9.4.

You can't. The Mac OS has never allowed changing the system font.

[Solved]Conky causes desktop icons to dissappear

I decided to fool around with conky, since I saw the thread lower down in the forums. I kinda mashed some code together and I have a conky I like (though I cant get all the modules working...) but, activating conky causes my desktop icons to dissapear (and re-appear if I mouse over). It's my frist time actually using conky...so I might have messed up something in my (well, a mash of other's) code.
# set to yes if you want tormo to be forked in the background
background yes
cpu_avg_samples 2
net_avg_samples 2
out_to_console no
# X font when Xft is disabled, you can pick one with program xfontsel
#font 7x12
#font *mintsmild.se*
# Use Xft?
use_xft yes
# Xft font when Xft is enabled
xftfont Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=8
# Text alpha when using Xft
xftalpha 0.8
# mail spool
#mail_spool $MAIL
# Update interval in seconds
update_interval 1
# Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus)
own_window no
# Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone)
double_buffer yes
# Minimum size of text area
minimum_size 230 5
maximum_width 250
# Draw shades?
draw_shades no
# Draw outlines?
draw_outline no
# Draw borders around text
draw_borders no
# Stippled borders?
stippled_borders 8
# border margins
border_margin 4
# border width
border_width 1
# Default colors and also border colors
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color black
# Text alignment, other possible values are commented
#alignment top_left
#alignment top_right
#alignment bottom_left
alignment bottom_right
# Gap between borders of screen and text
gap_x 13
gap_y 25
# Add spaces to keep things from moving about? This only affects certain objects.
use_spacer no
# Subtract file system buffers from used memory?
no_buffers yes
# set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase
uppercase no
# stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen
TEXT
${color #88aadd}$nodename - $sysname$kernel $machine
$hr
${color lightgrey}
${execp ~/.conkycalendar.sh}
#$hr
#${execi -l ~/.conkyforecast.py}
$hr
${color #88aadd}System Info:
${color lightgrey}CORE 0:${color} ${cpu 0}${color lightgrey}% ${alignr}${offset -49}${color}${freq_g 0} ${color lightgrey}Ghz
${color lightgrey}CORE 1:${color} ${cpu 1}${color lightgrey}% ${alignr}${offset -49}${color}${freq_g 1} ${color lightgrey}Ghz
${color lightgrey}CORE 2:${color} ${cpu 2}${color lightgrey}% ${alignr}${offset -49}${color}${freq_g 2} ${color lightgrey}Ghz
${color lightgrey}Uptime: ${color}$uptime
${color lightgrey}Processes:$color $running_processes/$processes ${offset 6}${color lightgrey}Load:$color ${loadavg 3}
${color lightgrey}RAM:$color $mem${color lightgrey} /${color}$memmax ( $memperc% )
${color lightgrey}Swap:$color $swap${color lightgrey} / ${color}$swapmax ( $swapperc% )
$hr
${color #88aadd}Top CPU:
${color lightgrey}Name CPU%
${color lightgrey}${top name 1} ${top cpu 1}%
${color lightgrey}${top name 2} ${top cpu 2}%
${color lightgrey}${top name 3} ${top cpu 3}%
${color lightgrey}${top name 4} ${top cpu 4}%
$hr
${color #88aadd}Top Memory:
${color lightgrey}Name PID CPU% MEM%
${color}${top_mem name 1} ${top_mem pid 1} ${top_mem cpu 1} ${top_mem mem 1}
${color}${top_mem name 2} ${top_mem pid 2} ${top_mem cpu 2} ${top_mem mem 2}
${color}${top_mem name 3} ${top_mem pid 3} ${top_mem cpu 3} ${top_mem mem 3}
${color}${top_mem name 4} ${top_mem pid 4} ${top_mem cpu 4} ${top_mem mem 4}
$hr
${color #88aadd}Network:
${color lightgrey}Net: $color${addr eth0}${offset 6}${color lightgrey}
#Essid: ${color}${exec sudo iwconfig eth0 | grep "ESSID" | cut -c 32-45}
${color lightgrey}Up:${color} ${upspeedf eth0} k/s${color lightgrey}${alignr}${color lightgrey}Tot:${color} ${totalup eth0} ${color lightgrey}
${color lightgrey}Down: ${color}${downspeedf eth0} k/s ${alignr}${color lightgrey}Tot:${color} ${totaldown eth0}
Local Ip ${alignr}${addr eth0}
Public Ip ${alignr}${execp ~/.conkyip.sh}
$hr
${voffset 5}${color #88aadd}Disks:
/ $color${fs_used /} / ${fs_size} (${fs_free /})${fs_used_perc /}${color lightgrey}%${offset 5}
${color #88aadd}Win7 $color${fs_used /media/Windows7} / ${fs_size /media/Windows7} (${fs_free /media/Windows7})${fs_used_perc /media/Windows7}${color lightgrey}%${offset 5}
${color #88aadd}DataI $color${fs_used /media/DATA} / ${fs_size /media/DATA} (${fs_free /media/DATA})${fs_used_perc /media/DATA}${color lightgrey}%${offset 5}
${color #88aadd}DataII $color${fs_used /media/DataII} / ${fs_size /media/DataII} (${fs_free /media/DataII})${fs_used_perc /media/DataII}${color lightgrey}%${offset 5}
${color #88aadd}Win7 $color${fs_used /media/DataII} / ${fs_size /media/DataII} (${fs_free /media/DataII})${fs_used_perc /media/DataII}${color lightgrey}%${offset 5}
#$hr
#${color #88aadd}Banshee - ${execi 15 ~/conkyshee.py --status}${alignr}#${offset -22}
# $color artist: ${color #88aadd}${execi 15 ~/conkyshee.py --artist}
# $color track: ${color #88aadd}${execi 15 ~/conkyshee.py --title}${voffset 5}
Last edited by JerichoKru (2010-02-01 06:55:18)

Maybe try:
double_buffer yes
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_hints undecorate,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager

Icons flicker and external drives don't work

anyone having this issue? It just started today.
the icons on the Late 2009 iMac desktop will flicker and when i try to copy a folder to one of my extarnal Seagate HD's the icons flash and the transfer stops.
thanks for any help. I looked on some boards but not seeing the flicker problem yet.

Thanks for your input AppleMan1958.
1) Make sure VIEW/EVENTS BY DISK is selected.
     Check, had already tried this but nothing shows no matter what I do.
2) Make sure the iMovie Projects folder and the iMovie Events folder on the external drive are at the top level of the drive. If they are within another folder, iMovie will not see them.
     Check, all 4 drives have these folders at the top level.
3) If you open iMovie within another user account, and everything works fine, then this is probably a corrupt preferences file. You can correct by trashing your preferences, as described here.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4061
     Tried this, no difference I'm afraid. Also, all four accounts on this computer exhibit the same behavior. All drives and projects show in the Projects window but nothing shows in the Events window.   I even created a brand new account and it's doing the same thing.
One other little detailed I should have mentioned.   I had a hard drive "failure" just before this started but managed to coax all the information from the failing drive on to a new one before it failed completely (interface issue on the external case and not a problem with the hard drive itself, I am now using the drive in a dock as a backup drive).   I now realize it would have been preferable to copy the movies to the new drive within iMovie but at the time was just focused on trying to save the information so did it through the OS. As it was I had to resort to copying individual clips from the old drive to the new because copying more than a couple of Gig at a time would fail.
I'm starting to consider picking up a new internal drive and re-installing everything from scratch and then manually copying over the user data files to make sure nothing corrupt gets copied over ?

Desktop icons disappear

I've recently noticed that my desktop icons keep disappearing and reapearing intermittently. I realized it was happening when I was listening to an audio file on an external firewire drive. It seems to specifically be the external drives (one firewire and one USB backup) that keep blinking in and out on the screen. I just noticed this, so I'm not sure how long it's been going on or if adding Maverick has anything to do with it. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I have also seen the few desktop icons that I have briefly flash several times, but haven't been able to nail down exactly what is causing it.
I run iTunes in the Mini Player all day long and at first I though that it was happening when iTunes changed tracks or albums.
Then I got to thinking about it and started poking around Notifications. I don't use Notifications, but I did notice that both iTunes and Safari were set to Alerts instead of None.
So on that note, I changed them both to None and I'm waiting to see if that was causing my desktop icons to flash...

Desktop icons question

Hi,
How can I get back the icon images from the files on my desktop.
On Maverick we had the pdf files with a preview of it, how can I get back that?
Thanks

I had this happen too. All my desktop icons disappeared. I have multiple desktops defined. I fixed it by deleting the additional desktops, creating new desktops and then deleting the original desktop. Now all icons appear normally.

Help! Desktop icons gone, no right click ... and Nautilus crashes!

I have a fully upgraded Gnome-based system, and all of a sudden my desktop icons disappeared, clicking on the desktop does nothing, and every time I use Nautilus it crashes with the error (from bug report):
Distribution: Unknown
Gnome Release: 2.24.3 2009-01-20 (Archlinux)
BugBuddy Version: 2.24.2
System: Linux 2.6.28-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jan 18 20:17:17 UTC 2009 i686
X Vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Vendor Release: 10503000
Selinux: No
Accessibility: Disabled
GTK+ Theme: Glider
Icon Theme: Foxtrot
Memory status: size: 0 vsize: 0 resident: 0 share: 0 rss: 0 rss_rlim: 0
CPU usage: start_time: 0 rtime: 0 utime: 0 stime: 0 cutime:0 cstime: 0 timeout: 0 it_real_value: 0 frequency: 0
----------- .xsession-errors (6 sec old) ---------------------
seahorse nautilus module initialized
** (nautilus:9421): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Not supported
** (nautilus:9421): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Not supported
--- Hash table keys for warning below:
--> file:///home/user
--> file:///home
(nautilus:9421): Eel-WARNING **: "nautilus-metafile.c: metafiles" hash table still has 2 elements at quit time (keys above)
(nautilus:9421): Eel-WARNING **: "nautilus-directory.c: directories" hash table still has 2 elements at quit time
seahorse nautilus module shutdown
Shutting down nautilus-open-terminal extension
It doesn't seem to be an options or configuration thing, maybe more like some sort of corruption? The Panels are fine. I have checked desktop and Nautilus options using Gconf and tried recreating ~/.gconf etc. The only suspicious occurrence was when, in the middle of a pacman -Syu, I was thrown back to the GDM login prompt. I just logged in again and did another pacman -Syu and everything seemed okay.
By the way, running Nautilus as root does show root's desktop okay, but Nautilus still crashes.
Any help would be most welcome for a very frustrating problem!
PS: Forgot to say that I'd tried reinstalling quite a few Gnome things and Nautilus, with no effect.
Also, the problem persists after restarting X, logon, reboot, power-off ...
Last edited by ninian (2009-01-21 09:35:05)

Uh-oh, seems like this problem could go wider than I thought. There's a fairly lengthy thread on the Ubuntu forums which smells the same, for example:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= … stcount=42 =>
Re: Desktop icons disappear
Got it! I can get a crash with this:
Code:
mkdir ~/test
cp /usr/share/applications/compiz.desktop ~/test/
nautilus ~/test
I'm going to leave a comment in the bug.
And in fact, I was mucking around with .desktop files when I think my icons went AWOL.
Anyone else brave enough to risk losing their desktop to try this out?!

All my desktop icons are Adobe Reader icons, can't access related files

I was trying to open a file this morning, and when a pop-menu asked what application I wanted to choose (from a list) to open it, I clicked on Adobe Reader - just as a guess. After that, just about all my desktop icons are Adobe icons, and when I click on them, the pop up menus says I can't access the file. These icons also show up on my menu of all my MS Office programs like Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.
Tech support at Adobe recommended I use System Restore, but it also is now an Adobe icon, so I can't open it. If anyone can help reverse this, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
David

Hi,
This also happened to me this morning. Now all my icons are PDF symbols and Reader opens when I try to open any other program. I uninstalled Reader it and it fixed itself but when I reinstalled the program the same issue occurred.
I wanted to make PDF reader the default application when openning PDF's vs. Distiller, tinkered and broke my computer.
Any clues on how to bring everything back to normaL?

Why have all my desktop icons changed to PDF when I installed Reader?

I just installed Adobe Reader, and all of my desktop icons have changed, and nothing will open. How can I fix this?

Hi Carol ,
This seems to happen just because the file associations of the files and folders have been changed and because of that you are experiencing this issue .
To change file associations you could refer the following link and see if that fixes the issue .This link is for windows 7 .
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows/change-default-programs#1TC=windows-7
Please follow the given steps and see if that works for you .
Fell free to write us back in case you face any difficulties .We would be happy to assist you .
Regards
Sukrit Dhingra

I deleted my desktop icon - now I can't save things to the desktop!

After a complete meltdown of my computer (and thank GOD I backed everything up!!) ... I'm transferring everything back to my iMac from an external drive ... BUT, I deleted the little "desktop" icon from my finder folder - or more like, I dragged a desktop folder from the external hard drive and "replaced" the desktop icon.
Now I can't save anything to the desktop. When I drag something to the desktop it says "The item cannot be moved because the 'desktop' cannot be modified."
Is there a way to get this back???

No ...
Under "Ownership & Permission" is says "You can - Read & Write", so that's not the issue.
What I did was:
When you open the finder window, there are several icons that appear in the window - usually the Desktop icon, the Home icon, the Applications icon, the Documents icon, the Movies icon, the Music icon and the Pictures icon.
What I did was, I dragged a "Desktop FOLDER" over from an external hard drive and it asked me if I wanted to replace the Desktop. I said "Yes" and now I no longer have the DESKTOP ICON on the left side of the finder window and I can no longer drag and drop things to the desktop.
The desktop icon no longer exists, so I can't access my desktop VIA the finder window.
Does this make sense?

Desktop icons flicker on Mavericks

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