Dock icons disappearing

Recently my icons in the dock have begun removing themselves. I can add something such as firefox to my dock, and within 5-10 seconds it removes itself. I have been able to reproduce this with a number of different apps. I've tried removing my com.apple.dock plist and db files, which rebuilds the dock, but as soon as I add any non-standard apps to the dock, they remove themselves within 5-10 seconds.
I do sync my dock items via mobile me, but I've tried turning the sync service off but it still happens. The odd part of this is the apps that remove themselves are all of the apps that were previously sync'd via mobile me. The problem only affects the current user (I created another user to test). I've also run software update and reinstalled the optional packages from my os x dvd.
The other piece of this story is that I attempted to run a dock duplication program, which allowed me to create separate docks. I don't know if it is related but the problem did occur shortly after I installed this app. I have since removed it, but I'm still encountering these issues.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not really sure what else it could be, I'd consider turning off the option to 'sync dock items' and see what happens. You may want to disable other mobile me 'sync services' too, incase they are the fault that cancels the sync.
Run a sync, restart and try again.
Resetting the data should tidy up the mess on the server, perhaps Apple is having difficulties, this page http://www.apple.com/uk/support/mobileme/ should list server problems for mobile me in your area.
Does it still happen when you are disconnected from the internet?
I think you could contact Apple, especially if you have Applecare, or start a process of elimination…
Make a clone backup of your mac, make sure it boots & works.
Make a new user account & try setting up syncing, perhaps one 'good sync' may fix the cloud? Check back in the original account. If it works in one but not the other you know it is somewhere in you account, probably in your home Library.
Now it gets icky … start by looking in (~/ means home) ~/Library/Preferences for filenames containing dock, sync, mobileme etc and delete them in you main account. Restart & re-add the settings for you mobile me account and see what happens.
Look in ~/Library/ByHost/ too it stores the preferences that are specific to you mac, there seems to be a com.apple.dock.syncclient.RanD0MStr1ng.plist file, that may be a good one to start with, along with the dotmac… files inside ByHost.
You could also trash the local sync services DB (~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices) It will wipe out all sync history I believe. Restart & try again.
Keep a list of what gets dumped using a pen & paper
Once you have 'hacked and slashed' it back to life you need to start moving items back from the backup copy to restore things you think are needed and in good order.
I'm not going to lie to you, the hack and slash is risky and time consuming, but I don't know enough about the guts of mobile me to resolve any other way. Asking Apple is safest
PS Address book and iCal have a backup feature in the file menu (one calls it export) use it just in case.
Message was edited by: Drew Reece - corrected path to sync services

Similar Messages

Dock icons disappear after 10.5.7 upgrade & .mac sync

Hi -
I have recently upgraded to 10.5.7, but now I am "loosing" dock icons after a .Mac (mobileme) sync. If I place an icon in the dock, it will remain in-place for about ~5 seconds then disappear completely.
I tried renaming my ~/Library, logging out then logging in, and although it was a "fresh" user the dock was working correctly (I could drag apps into it just fine with disappearing).
When I replaced my real ~/Library, the disappearing dock icon issue returned.
Has anyone else experienced this, or does anyone know what is going on with the 10.5.7 upgrade to cause this issue? I have quite a lot of necessary things in my Library (about 21gb worth) so can't really do without it.
TIA,
C.

Thanks for your reply.
I couldn't reset the mobile me sync data; the settings would not save and also my various machines which are sync'ed via mobile me were not displayed.
So I used TimeMachine to restore a copy of my Library (from a version which was about a week old) and all seems back to normal now. I then reset the sync database as you suggested, which worked fine. Thank goodness for backups!

Dock icons disappear when quitting apps

This is a brand new 1.9 GHz 17" iMac G5 with iSight built-in.
Software is up to date with OS 10.4.3 and all patches.
While working with the owner today, I quit Safari, and watched the Safari icon disappear from the dock. No smoke no nothing--when the App closed, the icon vanished.
Then I tried to demo iChat--and had the same experience.
It isn't a problem to drag the apps back to the Dock, but it shouldn't have to be done.
I finally wound up launching/quitting all Apps - all finally behaved properly, at least today.
Ideas on what's happening and how to prevent?

Ohairy, I'd guess that it was a corrupt plist. ~/library/preferences/com.apple.dock.plist.
Create a new account, name it "test" and see how the Dock icons work in that User acct? (That will tell if your problem is systemwide or limited to your User acct.)
If the Dock icons function normally in the new user, I'd delete the plist and rebuild the Dock icons.
If other "odd" issues begin to show up it may indicate hardware problems with added ram, cpu or hard disk. Run Disk Repair & AHT (Apple Hardware Test).
-mj
[email protected]

HT2474 Dock icons disappear

How do I keep the dock icons on the screen while on a webpage. I disappears and takes a little effort to get it come back up again. How can keep it there all the time? Tried using the system preferences but it doesn't have that option. The dock preferences also has no function to do this. In my older Imac, the dock icons are alway at the bottom, don't have to make them appear. Thanks.

This is happening for me too. Restarting does fix it, but it tends to come back after a day or two. It usually starts off with just one icon, but eventually it strikes most of them. Only one of the two shadows remain - the one that goes up against the desktop. The one that appears against the dock is clipped away, you can usually see the top four or five pixels of it if the entire icon disappears, but it's mostly gone. Some apps only lose part of their icon - for example, some icons tend to show a small sliver about halfway down. I'm guessing this is probably some weird clipping bug, or maybe it's just the bitmap cache getting partially erased.
Also, as long as I'm talking about the dock, why do both shadows bounce with the icons? Shouldn't the shadow that rests on the dock logically stay there?

My mail dock icon disappears in seconds.

I have dragged the app to my dock, and within a second or 2 it just vanished. The app works fine when launched from the application folder. Very strange.
I deleted the PLIST dock files and even requested the dock icons not be synched between my systems. Rebooted twice.

try restarting the dock in Activity Monitor

Dock icons disappeared on Playbook

Can you please help to findout the icons that disappeared from dock and how can I get back all the icon on dock ?

amghouri wrote:
Can you please help to findout the icons that disappeared from dock and how can I get back all the icon on dock ?
If you have had removed all icons from the Quick Launch Bar, then an array error would be displayed. The only way to prevent this from happening is to leave at least one icon on the launch bar...easier said than done now though
Lost_at_sea is right. You have to physically long press on EACH icon or folder containing icons until they have the little x visible on them and then drag them onto the quick launch bar and then release them. They will dissapear. You have to do this with ALL icons/folders. None can be left visible anywhere on the interface (even if you have more than one page of icons). Then you must reboot the tablet fully. Then the icons will reappear and you can organize them once more.
I have had to do this myself so I know this works. This is a serious bug in the PlayBook 2.1 OS and this is the only workaround. It's time consuming and painful but it works.

G4 very sluggish and dock icons disappeared

I have an older G4 with a Sonnet 1.4G card in it. Lately it's been acting up. It was off for a day, and when I booted tonight, all of the aliases in the dock that were not there by default had disappeared. It wouldn't run disk utility or cocktail from the boot disk. Tried running TechTool on it. Same issue. Booted from the OS 10.4 installer and ran disk utility on it, repaired permissions. No disk issues, but a few premissions got repaired. But still no love.
This machine has an Ultra-ATA card in it and a 300Gb Seagate, along with an 80G boot drive. 1.5G RAM. An old UltraSCSI card. A recent Firewire 800/400 card, as the firewire drives attached to it were not mounting properly. In other words, it's been acting more and more squirrely over the past few weeks. Maybe it's just its age. Maybe it's the six 250G Firewire drives.
G4 450Mhz with Sonnet 1.4Ghz upgrade 1.5G RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) Firewire buses (2), ATA PCI Card,
G4 450Mhz with Sonnet 1.4Ghz upgrade 1.5G RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) Firewire buses (2), ATA PCI Card, Adaptec UltraSCSI

James, have you checked your battery? I've had two machines suddenly start to act up in odd ways such as; all settings revert to factory defaults, "fountain of youth effect"on date/time (i.e. "1/1/1904"), once I couldn't get it to power up. I found that replacing the 3.6v battery fixed everything.
I'm not familiar with the sluggish symptoms or failure to run DU, but if you can't think of anything else, a $7 repair effort is an easy place to start. (and if it's not the problem, you can probably re-use the battery in a camera).
Dave

Dock icons disappeared after the Dock app killed via terminal

Hello, I'm running the new OS X Mavericks on a late 09' Mac Mini, my problem started when I had finished updating Grageband.
When the update was over, from some reason the Grageband icon became invisible, so i tried using the "killall Dock" commend via terminal to restart the dock.
And it took considerably longer then usual, and when it came back up, most of the icons became invisible too, well, as I'm pretty sure it's a one time bug and it will be resolved when I'll restart the machine I'll relog to my user, is that happened to anyone else? and is there anything I can do to prevent this problem in the future?
Thank you in advance. Omer.

I just did a clean install on my 2011 MM and am having the same issue. Whats the terminal kill for the dock?
Ive added a screen shot. Can't drag and drop the trash can....:-/
Looked up the cmd and now I have a properly working dock. Didnt have to drag any apps out either
"killall Dock"

Dock has disappeared

Not for me but for a friend who's still using Snow Leopard. Happened just after a power failure. It's not an auto-hide issue.

Maybe this may help:
Re: Dock Icons Disappeared
created by n MacBook Pro - View the full discussion
before i restarted:
TERMINAL COMMAND to reset dock: killall Dock
- i moved "com.apple.dockfixup.plist" from /Library/Preferences to ~/Desktop
- i moved "com.apple.dock.plist" and "com.apple.dock.plist.lockfile" from ~/Library/Preferences to ~/Desktop
- made sure that all 3 of those files ONLY existed at ~/Desktop
upon restart i thought i heard some sort of audio tone come from my macbook pro (could be going insane though).
after restart i have verified that osx did re-create "com.apple.dock.plist" and "com.apple.dock.plist.lockfile" and that it did not re-create "com.apple.dockfixup.plist" (good thing i have the file on my Desktop right?).
althought the output is messy,
$ cat ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
looks like it shows the plist is now restored to system default.
the elephant in the room here i think is that "com.apple.dock.db" is missing entirely from my system.
anyone willing to attach their file here for me? curious to see if i can force a fix here.

Somehow my application icon in the dock has disappeared and I have no idea where it went or how to get it back. I am not all that computer knowledgeable. Thanks for your help.

Somehow my application icon in the dock has disappeared. I have no idea where it went but it contains all my applications that i use. How do I get the application icon to return to the dock. Thanks for your help. I am not computer literate by any means. Thanks

Goto your application folder, find your app then drag/drop it back to the dock.

Dock icons STILL keep disappearing.

There is a thread here that says 'SOLVED' but it was not solved for many people posting on that thread. Here is the URL for it:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7855781&#7855781
So, I have begun this new thread with the same topic. My dock icon (mail) keeps disappearing. It slides to the right then disappears. Moving the plist dock and db to the trash then rebooting does not fix this problem for me, nor many others on the initial thread. The problem is not specific to the 'mail' icon, other icons are affected as well.
My mail icon is a big deal, please help.

I have three macs that I use every day. I am so annoyed that I can't make any changes to the Dock icons on any of them, and I am sure it has something to do with MobileMe. I have turned off syncing the Dock but it still won't let me make any changes. I have tried the methods people have mentioned in various threads but none of it works.
When I make a change to the Dock, I am doing it for a reason. For Apple to have implemented code that would under any circumstances undo the change that I have made is ridiculous. Everything else about Leopard is great, but this is really, really frustrating and messing up my work groove.

Disappearing Dock Icons since downloading iTunes 9

I just downloaded iTunes 9 and ever since I installed it on my macbook pro, dock icons have been disappearing. They are still there and I can click on them to launch the application, however the picture, for example the icon for iTunes is invisible.

I've got almost the same issue!
iTunes 9 itself has no Dock icon, but invisible icon still exists.
Trashed iTunes 9 and re-installed it with the .mpkg downloaded from apple.com ... funnily enough while installing, Installer.app had no icon! The iTunes icon remains invisible.
All other apps appear to be fine.

I installed firefox on OSX Mountian Lion and the icon disappears off of dock when I restart

I installed firefox on OSX Mountian Lion and the icon disappears off of dock when I restart. I get a question mark instead but when I click on it the firefox icon reappears.

Drag Firefox to a location on the hard disk and launch it from there instead of the mounted dmg.
(68876)

I have Mac OS10.4.11 with MS Office 2004 installed. Yesterday, when clicking on the Entourage icon, in the dock, to receive my Email, the icon disappeared and I lost my Email service from the HD and from Spotlight, as well. Word, Excel and PP are still OK

I have Mac OS10.4.11 with MS Office 2004 for Mac, installed. Yesterday, when clicking on the Entourage icon, in the dock, to receive my Email, the icon disappeared and I lost my Email service from the HD and from Spotlight, as well. Word, Excel and PP are still OK. Could this be a virus?

Just thinking, if things are really missing...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Tiger Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)

One dock icon moves and disappears

Recently my Firefox dock icon started moving all the way to the right of the dock when it was open, and disappearing from the dock when it was closed.
I have read a couple topics on the same issue, which recommended resetting MobileMe sync data and to unregister/reregister the offending computer. This did not work.
I discovered that when I move the Firefox app from my applications folder to my desktop, then place it in the dock, that icon stays put in the dock (and the desktop icon stays put on the desktop) - until I open Firefox. At that point the static Firefox dock icon 'duplicates' into a second far-right dock icon. When I click to another application then click back on either the static Firefox icon or the new one on the far right of the dock, they both work to make Firefox the front app.
I want my Firefox dock icon to work again, like in the golden days of old. Any recommendations?

I also dragged the dock two utility files (com.apple.dock.db, com.apple.dock.plist) to the desktop and relogged, resetting the dock. This did not work.
I reinstalled Firefox, but that did not work.
The Firefox dock icon stays put on the other iMac user and on my MBP.
Crazy maddening. I feel like there must be something that is corrupted, but am not sure what.

Dock icons disappearing

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for