Missing icons on macOS Sierra

Question

I'm on macOS Sierra and I have been losing icons randomly, as you can see below, the Adobe Illustrator folder does not look like it should.

This also occurs in the Dock:

FaceTime (left of iTunes) has no icon, this also occurs with numerous other applications such as Inkscape, Gimp, and a few others.

Please help!

Answer 1

I had to run the below commands to make my icons come back. It took a while to find, but it finally sorted everything.

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store
killall Dock

Answer 2

This happened to me after upgrading to High Sierra - Having tried all of the icon cache suggestions without any success I booted in to "safe mode" and the problem was fixed.

1. Restart Mac holding the shift key as soon as you hear the startup chime and hold until the boot sequence shows the Apple
2. Log in and check the icons
3. Restart to get out of safe mode (where many things are disabled)

4. Log in normally and verify the icon database is rebuilt correctly under a normal mode start up

   • https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262 Using Safe Mode to isolate issues

Answer 3

This happened to my icons in high sierra

This was the fix. I booted in safe mode, logged in and then rebooted out of safe mode and all my icons were back. Yay!

Here's how to boot in safe mode

1. Start or restart your Mac, then immediately press and hold the Shift key.
2. The Apple logo appears on your display.
3. Release the Shift key when you see the login window.

You can reboot out of safe mode by restarting and not pressing any buttons during startup. Hope that fixed your problems,

Noah

Answer 4

It worked for me (albeit in Mojave) by

• removing the icon from the dock, then

• opening the app and selecting the option to

• “keep in dock.”

The other options (the sudo routine with “killall Dock” at the end and booting in Safe Mode) did not have the desired result. Again, this was Mojave, but due to its simplicity, it’s worth a try in other OSes as well.

Answer 5

The complete solution that actually did the trick was the following commands, issued in terminal

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;

sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store;

defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true;

killall Dock

Answer 6

1. Open System Preferences
2. Open Dock
3. Change the Position on screen and then it back to your original settings

Answer 7

Right-click every broken icon and select Show in Finder. Fixed it for me while the other suggestions here did not work at all.

Answer 8

Tried a lot of commands found in several articles and nothing worked. Rebooting in safe mode did the trick in high sierra.

Answer 9

If nothing works, still you can download the latest adobe folder icons for 2020 release and try changing it manually

dribbble.com/adobe-folder-icons-SVG-PNG

Answer 10

1. Command Space
2. Type Monitor and select Activity Monitor.
3. Quit WindowServer process.
4. Then the session is closed, enter your credentials and all icons all ok now.

Answer 11

Force quitting all the iconservices and the Dock executables through the Activity Monitor app also worked for me. This may be a smoother experience for terminal-averse users :)

1. Open the "Activity Monitor" app
2. Use the search box (top right) to search for "iconservices"
3. Select and quit(top left button ) all the icon services executables with the "Force quit" option.
4. Use the search box to search for "Dock"
5. Select and quit the "Dock" executable () with the "Force quit" option.