Reset icon cache on MacBook

Question

I've been trying to find out how to reset the icon cache on my MacBook, and two methods seem to always be suggested. However, the two approaches differ slightly in the third line.

Method 1

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

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

sudo mv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store com.apple.ic

Method 2

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

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

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

What do these two approaches essentially do and what is the effect of the difference on line three? Is one method better than the other?

Answer 1

Be careful with Method 2, it seems will delete more files than it should do. I tried method 2 on my Macbook Air (El Capitan 10.11.6), causing it unable to boot. Had to recover from Timemachine backup.

Answer 2

They both remove the icon cache and it's content with the first and second command. The difference in the third command is that in Method 1 the com.apple.iconservices.store is just renamed (so it can be recovered if things go wrong), in Method 2 it is directly removed. From a functional point of view, there isn't really a difference.

As Method 1 implies that one removes the renamed directory manually after the next reboot, I would go with Method 2.