Icons Keep Moving

Hello. I have a 23" Cinema Display that I connect to at work with my MacBook Pro. Recently, I got a second 23" Cinema Display for home. Ever since, whenever I connect my laptop to either monitor, all of my icons rearrange. They usually move to the right side of my laptop, even though I have the monitors preferences set to have the 23" as the main display. Whenever I try to move the icons, they snap back into place. And, when I click once on any icon and then click on the desktop, that icon moves to a new, seemingly random, location.
I know there are options to organize icons by name, date, etc. and I am assuming that I selected one of those preferences. But, I do not see an option to organize by "none." How can I keep my icons from constantly relocating?
Thanks, Greg

The "none" option doesn't actually get rid of the "snap to grid" option (which is now something you can't turn off for the Desktop, just set the spacing for with the second slider). However, when you first change from some 'arrange by' order to "none," the current "snap to grid" setting isn't immediately enforced & the Desktop items may revert to some former locations, including (I think) those set while the OS allowed the "snap to grid" option to be turned off. I suspect this is what was happening to you.
Had you followed setting the "none" option with even the slightest nudge on the grid spacing slider, you would have seen the icons jump to that spacing. The same would have happened with the icon size slider, since either one would have applied the view option settings immediately.
The same would have been true if you had relaunched the Finder, logged out & back in, or restarted the Mac, which is what you did.
The jumping around icon thing was I think the result of the Finder "noticing" that the selected icon wasn't on a current grid intersection & 'helpfully' moving it to one.
Anyway, the main point is that should it happen again in the future, you can fix this just by nudging the grid spacing slider. You don't have to restart or log out.

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