Wrong/generic icon in Finder

I decided to change some of my application icons today, but when I click an icon and select "Get Info," the small image displayed in the upper left corner is a generic icon labelled "ICNS" or "PNG," and not the icon I want. This appears to be happening with all of my icons, even old ones I've had no trouble with before. Here's what I get when I look at my Firefox icon, for example:
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/philosofish/missingicon.png
Strange, as the icon shows up just fine in my dock, and also shows up when I select "Get Info" for the application itself.
I have "Show Icon Preview" checked off under my View options, and I'm quite puzzled. I tried using Micon instead of changing my icons manually, but only succeeded in replacing existing icons with the generic square image labelled "PNG." See:
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t203/philosofish/operawrongicon.png
Any insight would be appreciated!

Welcome to the forums Emily!
No answer, but perhaps a clue for you...
If I go to /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/firefox.icns by viewing the contents, and on a never changed Get Info/Icon, and then I do a Get info on that firefox.icns by itself, it looks precicely like your first link, whereas a Get Info on Firefox itself has the FF icon up in the top left, not the icns icon with the folded corner as in my first one & your 1st pic/link.
Somewhere along the way my tongue stumbled over my eyelids or something, but...

Similar Messages

Blank/generic icons in finder's sidebar

Each time I restart my computer I get generic icons for some elements in the finder window's sidebar.
Here is a screenshot : http://twitpic.com/18x7ma
This happened since I'm using Snow Leopard.
All the ones having "blank" icons are shortcuts to another hard drive (ie: not the startup disk). Using an open command (file › open) from another software and selecting each element restore the original icons.

When creating a Dock alias, you should drag the original item to the Dock, not an alias of it (any item in your Sidebar is an alias.
If this is not the issue go to /Users/yourname/Library/Preferences and delete these 2 files /com.apple.dock.plist
and com.apple.dock.db.plist
Then restart. This will give you the default Dock, so you'll have to reset yours the way you like it)
-mj

JPEGs have generic icons in finder.

I have several folders with many JPEGs, all between 8 & 12 MB each. Although I have selected "show icon preview" for all of them in Get Info, about 8% of them show only the generic JPEG icon, and not the preview of the pic.
Some are orig. scans of photos, some have been worked on in Photoshop, but there is no consistency between the ones showing only generic icons.
How can I fix this please?

Thanks, no there are not.
The icons are generic in all views.
But when I 'get info' the preview of the pic is ok.
I can rectify the problem by opening each pic in turn with either preview or photoshop and immediately re-saving it over the top of the original, but this is a massive job as there are so many.
Any other suggestions?

Generic jpeg icon in finder

I have a number of jpeg icons which appear in a generic format in Icon view in the finder, i.e.the icon simply says 'jpeg' and does not give a thumbnail of the image. if I save an image in tiff format (from Photoshop or Preview) the icon shows a thumbnail of the file's contents but Preview saves show only the generic format. Two questions: how do I make sure all jpegs are saved with a thumbnail and can I convert existing generic icons to show a thumbnail without converting them to tiffs?

enetr command+J in finder and in the resulting popup check the box "show icon preview".

Wrong preview icon and image in finder

I recently upgraded my computer - now running snow leopard 10.6.8. I have noticed that when I save files in certain applications (eg. ai CS5 files) the preview icon in finder windows is not of the application but just a blank page icon instead. Also on the desktop it's just a blank doc page not the ai. icon.
I have managed to manually alter a few files by clicking and dragging the ai. icon in the Get Info window from the bar to the ai. icon beneath and the application icon does remain then but each new file has the same problem - I don't want to keep altering them manually for every file.
A second, related (I suppose) problem is that the actual preview image in the finder window is wrong - not the last saved image (or even a previously saved image) but a combination of several turned off layers in the case of ai. files. The preview image is wrong also if opening direct from illustrator CS5.
Thanks for any ideas.

Yes this is one of those commands that takes off on it's own. That is why I specified to let it run it coarse and will put you back out at the prompt when complete. Sounds like you did it correctly.
I would advise booting off install DVD and run both Repair Disk and Repair Permissions.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1782
From there....
genegenie wrote:
I recently upgraded my computer - now running snow leopard 10.6.8.
If you ran the delta update through the Software updater, I would reinstall the 10.6.8 combo on top of what you have. Many curious anomaly can be straightened out with this: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
Still repair permissions before and after Combo-Update.
Message was edited by: leroydouglas

CR2 generic icon in Adobe Bridge instead of a thumbnail

Hi, Since buying Lightroom3 I find that I can only see a CR2 generic icon in Adobe Bridge instead of a thumbnail when I browse the folder containing my RAW files. Loading Lightroom3 may just be a coincidence.
I am using Canon cameras up to 5Dmk2 and PS4 software on my iMac. I have downloaded PS 11.0.2, Bridge3.00 and Camera Raw 5.7.0.213.
I have purged the cache for the folder. I have downloaded DNG converter 6.10.250 and processed the file but still cannot see the thumbnails.
Within Bridge preferences the Camera Raw Preferences is a light gray and cannot be accessed. Is this normal?
If I trash CS4 completely would I be able to reload from the original Cd and try again.
Grateful for any advice. Alex

http://forums.adobe.com/community/bridge/bridge_macintosh

Photos now carry generic icons instead of a the actual picture

While taking screenshots one day, I noticed that all the pictures on my desktop had that ugly, generic picture icon (you know, the sheet of paper with the picture of Preview's icon on it?) instead of the mini copy of the actual photo they usually do. I went back through my pictures folder and half of them retained their cute little copy of themselves, and the other half are the generic blank.
WHY?!
I didn't realize how useful this feature was until this happened, and I want it back! Other types of files that generally do this, like PDFs remain thankfully unharmed. Help, please

OK, this seems the closest thread to what's going on here. I've got a late-2008 Macbook Pro, 10.5.8. Icons on the desktop and in finder windows are showing generic icons instead of the application-specific ones. Funny thing is, if I do a relaunch of the Finder (option-click/hold Finder icon in dock to bring up the menu), the specific icons will show up, but after a second or two will switch back to the generic ones. ??

Generic icons are displayed after visiting bookmarks instead of Favicons.

1. I have done multiple searches over the past month trying to find a resolution to this issue without any success. Somewhere during the last two Firefox updates all of my bookmarks are now displaying the generic icon instead of the specific icon for that URL (i.e. www.doctoroz.com).
2. The few responses, to the multiple posts for this same issue, have been no help (with a couple needing to be deleted as they don't answer the question (padding posts?)).
3. Could a Master Thread be created grouping related questions and responses?

If this is a feature, it sucks!

Generic Icon vs. Thumbnail Icon

What would cause a photo (jpeg file) to show up in Finder with an icon that is a thumbnail of the actual photo vs. a generic icon? The two cases seem to lead to different behavior in a plug-in that I use (Mail Attachments Iconizer) in Mail. When attached to an email, the files with thumbnail icons open up in the body of the email whereas the files with generic icons do not (which is the desired behavior)?
Thanks.

That doesn't appear to be the case. Show Icon Preview is unchecked. Furthermore, other jpeg files in the same folder have generic icons.
I should add that the files with thumbnail view as icons were edited in Photoshop in OS 10.4 (my second drive boots into 10.4 to allow me to use an older version of Photoshop). This folder is on a partition of my 10.5 drive. I am viewing the folder in 10.5 That could be why these files show up differently, but I don't understand why it should be so.

Corrupted icons in Finder and Mail

My icons for files and folders often get corrupted as shown here:
http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/spag/dm/corrupted_icons.pdf
The problem is cured (temporarily) by a reboot, but not by relaunching the Finder. Strangely, the problem "spreads" like an infection: at first, only the icons in one folder viewed in the Finder are corrupted, then quickly more and more get corrupted. The bad icons even infiltrate some applications, like Mail - see the bottom two icons in the rightmost screen shot of the link. When a single file has a bad icon, I can "delete" that icon in the info window for that file, and it reverts to normal. This does not seem to work when the corrupted icon is that of a folder.
I have a suspicion that the problem tends to spread from "old" files (never folders) that pre-date OSX. But that's not much more than speculation, since many of my files are of that type. Also, the problem has spread to other macs that I "migrated" to from the one originally affected.
Any help at all - such as suggestions of how to cleanse my Mac so that this does not reoccur - would be greatly appreciated...
Sandy

The problem is still not understood, but it seems I've been able to get rid of it. Many years ago (quite possibly still under OS9) I had given some folders special icons to make them stand out visually. I then put those folders in the toolbar of the Finder window (even now under Leopard, where dragging folders to the toolbar no longer seems to be officially encouraged but still works). In search of "anything unusual" to do with icons I now removed those pictures from the folders in their info field (so now they look normal again, like any other folders), and haven't had any more corrupted icons since. This has now been stable for about a fortnight, while before this measure I had newly corrupted icons about twice a week at least.
Caveat: I didn't remove those custom-made icons from all my folders: I simply forgot two of them (which, however, were changed later I think). So even if restoring generic icons to some folders solved the problem, the problem will most certainly be difficult to reproduce.

Disk volume mounts displaying generic icon

I've been having a regular problem with a Drobo disk system, which becomes inaccessible periodically.
When I remount the device using
diskutil mount Drobo
... the volume reappears, but instead of the usual icon:
I get the generic icon:
Why is this, and is it fixable without physically disconnecting the Drobo's USB cable, and reconnecting?

Hello Stacie-P8
First welcome to the discussions area.
There are a few things to try before erasing the HD. That would be my last step.
I would try trashing the keyboard preferences. Open the HD go into the system folder, then to the library, then to preference panes. There you will find the prefs for the keyboard. Drag to trash and then see if that helps. The computer will generate new prefs.
Next I would try to borrow a keyboard and see if the problem occurs. It could be a short in the keyboard or a broken wire if it isn't an optical keyboard.
My feeling is that it is related to the keyboard and not the HD.....Jim

Old and generic icon or thumbnail removal

Dear all,
Over the years I used different ways or softwares to generate thumbnails in my images library. Before OSX 10.6, that was the way to go because the finder is not really good to practically showing them.
But now with OSX 10.6 the icons are generate fast and if you want at a resolution of 512 x 512 great to explore image folder.
The problem is for the images that have thumbnails created in the past by different ways, normally they was generated at 128 x 128 and they look ugly, a solution is to command+i on the image and delete the icon, work great, but you need to do it one by one for each image.
I have more than 10,000 images and the 3/4 of them have a generic icon, I try to remove the icons in batch, but every thing I tried fail, I tried software for removing the resource fork, some softwares for generating icon said the can remove icon also but this is not working nether.
I'm stuck, did someone have a solution?
Thanks

first, you can use CoCoThumbX. it can batch remove custom thumbnails. also, you can do it in batches by hand as follows. select a bunch of files in finder and enter commandoptioni. this will open just one info window for all of them. select the icon in the upper left corner and hit delete.

F4v & flv show as generic icons and are not scaled

Hi!
I'm using Bridge CS4 for some years and since the reinstall of my operating system (Vista Business 32bits) and of CS4, all the f4v and flv files are showing as generic file icons. That means that I do not get the video thumbnail for f4v or flv files in the Content panel. This was working before my reinstall.
Also, the f4v or flv videos show only the top left corner in the preview panel. This has something to do with scaling: Bridge shows the preview of a 640x480 f4v or flv video normally but the 1920x1080 videos are not scaled.
I also use MOV files and for these, I get a scaled preview and a thumbnail in the Content panel.
Any clue how I can get back the video thumbnails for f4v and flv files as well as the scaling?

@ Curt Y,
I really appreciate your input. It brought me one step further in any case.
I made a couple of screenshots with a before and after state. Please note that the before and after pictures where made on two computers with different screen resolution, one laptop I am now trying to fix and one desktop (this will show in the degree of scaling of the previews in Bridge). These two computers, however, display the same problem regarding the flv and f4v files.
This is before: (desktop, unfixed):
- a flv shows as generic icon, in this case the VLC Media Player icon
- the flv preview is not scaled (I see only part of the picture, the top left corner)
This is what VLC Media Player shows with the same file (desktop and laptop):
- the flv plays
- I get the full picture (scaled)
This is after the install of K-Lite (laptop, partially fixed):
- the flv and f4v files have a thumbnail (and not a generic icon anymore)
- the preview is still not scaled (to avoid confusion please note here the resolution difference between the laptop and desktop screen: I see less on the laptop but it's normal. So I get a smaller top left corner with just the sky and no house).
For my flv file, G Spot shows exactly the same codec and warning as your screenshot with barsandtone.flv.
So, now I have thumbnails. I just need to find a way to tell Bridge to scale the preview...

Some PDFs Show Only Generic Icon

Hello,
I hope someone has an answer for this. I haven't used Bridge very much, but starting to use it to catalog a large batch of PDF files (Bridge CS5). Most of my PDF files show actual previews in Bridge, but many other PDF files show only the generic PDF file icons.
I eventually figured out that the PDF files that show as generic icons are all files that someone had password-protected so that the files couldn't be printed or altered. Apparently this password protection precludes Bridge from creating previews for these PDF files.
Is this expected behavior?
Is there a way around this problem? I don't know the password to the protected PDF files, so I can't open them in Acrobat Pro and change these settings. All I want to do is view these PDF files in Bridge so I can sort them in in an efficient manner.
I would appreciate any discussion and/or help with this problem.
Thank you very much.

I eventually figured out that the PDF files that show as generic icons are all
files that someone had password-protected so that the files couldn't be
printed or altered.
If a PDF has password protection you can't view and open them without this
password, nor can you view it in Bridge (there is also no preview in the
Finder, just a lock symbol with PDF at the bottom). A normal PDF file can be
viewed as thumb in the content window but in the preview window you can also
run through a multipage PDF to view its content.
Is this expected behavior?
Yes it is, a password is what it does, protect anyone from viewing it
without providing the password when asked for
Is there a way around this problem? I don't know the password to the
protected PDF files, so I can't open them in Acrobat Pro and change these
settings. All I want to do is view these PDF files in Bridge so I can sort
them in in an efficient manner.
There maybe someone that knows a very obscure way to break those passwords
but I don't know of it (nor would I like to know it....) so without the
password you will never be able to view them. Normally you won't also be
able to undo the security of a protected file without knowing the
permissions password also.
So if you don't know the passwords and don't know how to get them your
easiest option will be delete them so they won't bother you again and also
don't take space on your system...

After I modify a photograph, it's thumbnail appear as a generic icon, why? iMac 10.10.2

When I open a folder containing photos displayed as picture thumbnails, after editing a photo (in Elements 13), when I save the changes, the thumbnail picture disappears and is replaced by a generic icon. My computer is an iMac 5K running 10.10.2

Thanks for trying to help.
I am using Icons view but the problem is the same in any of the view options.
I tried changing the size of the icons it makes no difference.
I will try to include two screenshots to show the issue.
Screenshot 1 shows the finder folder open with 11 photo thumbnails in it.
Screenshot 2 shows the same folder after I have modified some of the photos using PSE 13. I changed several of the photos and two of their thumbnails are now generic icon thumbnails whilst others have normal picture thumbnails.

Wrong/generic icon in Finder

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for