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After upgrading to Catalina 10.15.2 the Macintosh HD icon on my Desktop and other places is showing what looks like a Chrome disk image icon instead. I've tried restarting and running first aid on the volume with no changes. Any ideas how to restore the normal icon?

desktop icon

disk utility icon

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    I'd try the following: Select the Macintosh HD icon on the Desktop and then press ⌘I to bring up its Get Info sheet, or right-click and select Get Info. Then click the icon in the upper left corner of its Get Info sheet to select it. Now press the Delete key. What hopefully happens is the icon for Google Chrome is deleted and the default icon reappears.
    – user3439894
    Commented Jan 25, 2020 at 16:49
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    If that doesn't work, try the following: In Terminal use the open /System/Library/Extensions/IOStorageFamily.kext/Contents/Resources command to open Finder to that location. Open the Internal.icns in Preview, and press ⌘A then ⌘C to copy all images to the Clipboard. Now in the Get Info sheet for the Macintosh HD icon select the icon in the upper left corner and press ⌘V to paste the icons. While technically not back to normal, nonetheless you should now have the correct icon showing for the Macintosh HD.
    – user3439894
    Commented Jan 25, 2020 at 17:09
  • Thank you for the suggestions but unfortunately neither of those seemed to work. Deleting the icon from the info screen seems like a common solution, I'm not sure why it isn't working for me.
    – jjathman
    Commented Jan 25, 2020 at 17:19
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    Using the Internal.icns trick did work for me. My problem the first time was I was selecting the versions of the icon in the sidebar that Preview displays and not the main version. Using the File -> Edit menu to select everything worked though!
    – jjathman
    Commented Jan 28, 2020 at 21:51
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    @Terry Wang, If a copy of an image has been pasted into the icon on a files/folders Get Info window, then it can indeed be deleted! I've done it many times.
    – user3439894
    Commented Apr 23, 2020 at 3:47

1 Answer 1

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None of the workarounds mentioned in comments worked for me, so I decided to write a separate answer for people with the same trouble.

Experienced the same issue since the upgrade from Mojave 10.14 to Catalina (10.15.1), felt unreal and confused. Spent 10-15 mins searching and troubleshooting trying to fix but no luck (including Get Info - Upper Left corner - select the Icon - ⌘ + delete - it didn't work).

Mysterious and no one can explain how and why it happened (if you can, please_).

Disk Utility.app show the same Chrome Disk Image icon, didn't find a way to force a refresh or delete it.

Disk Utility.app

I was hoping that the issue would be fixed by macOS patches but obviously NO up until 10.15.4, that's why I ended up here lol.

So the solution that worked for me:

  1. In Terminal (or iTerm2)
open /System/Library/Extensions/IOStorageFamily.kext/Contents/Resources

  1. Open internal.icns in Preview.app

  2. Select all icons included by using ⌘ + A and copy to clipboard ⌘ + C

  3. In Get Info UI, click on the upper left corner icon to select it

  4. Paste ⌘ + V, if this does NOT work, use the file menu - Edit - Paste, the latter worked like a charm for me, finally...

NOTE: In my case, I didn't select all icons included in the icon resource file, so the paste ended up with a wrong one, when I use the file menu - Edit - Undo, it just refreshed to the correct Icon, hmm... Anyway, it worked. Thanks to @user3439894 and OP @jjathman

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    Like others, I couldn't select the icon in Get Info. Also, the paste from internal.icns didn't work, but then hitting Undo after that did restore the original.
    – Ethan Duckworth
    Commented Sep 17, 2020 at 13:52
  • @EthanDuckworth Can't believe it's still hitting people. Glad to see it fixed the annoying problem for you.
    – Terry Wang
    Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 6:13
  • @EthanDuckworth I could select the icon but could not paste (perhaps, as mentioned in a comment on the OP, I selected all icons in the sidebar, not "select all" from a single icon. But like you, I noticed that there was an "undo paste" option in the edit menu, which did the trick. I would recommend that anyone who has this problem go to the "Get Info" window and see if there is a paste to undo...
    – Nat Kuhn
    Commented Dec 27, 2020 at 3:46

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