Folder aliases in Sierra not showing correct icon after restart

macOS 10.12 Sierra has a different arrangement for folder aliases which reduces their space usage. It's gone from 1.3MB down to <1KB which is great. This will save me nearly a gigabyte of disk space.


However, on a restart folder aliases show a generic document icon instead of the normal folder alias icon. I can fix this issue temporarily in each folder individually by refeshing the folder view (e.g. by changing the sort order). But, the problem returns for all aliases after a restart. It doesn't seem to occur during a log off/on.


This affects icons created in 10.12 as well as those created earlier.


This looks a lot like a bug.



Garry.

Replies

Which version Sierra are you using?

Im getting some weird results from mine - sierra returned my icons to the blank page icon, and in creating an alias of a folder, I get the custom icon I have for that folder, but with a weird pixelated mess where the old alias arrow used to be

I'm seeing this for "Applications" folder aliases on distributed .dmg files, too--the sort of thing whereby an app is dragged to the alias to install it from the .dmg. The alias works as expected, it just displays as a generic blank icon. I seem to recall this also occurred for a while on early versions of a previous OS, like Lion or thereabouts.

A know bug described here (plus others): https://eclecticlight.co/2016/09/28/known-bugs-in-macos-sierra-10-12-an-incomplete-summary/

Rather irritating for those of us who prefer the icon view. When Yosemite was released, I also noticed with aliases not displayign correctly. Some of those were fixed in one of the later "cleanup updates" and now "unfixed" by Sierra. Apple needs some good German and Swiss engineers so very good at polishing details ...

Same defect in Finder, slightly different symptom.


General Finder Defect : Folder alias icons get generic document icons


Symptom 1: New folder alias has generic document icon

  1. Open two folders in the Finder in icon view (command 1)
  2. Create another folder inside the "source" folder
  3. Hold command key and drag new folder from "source" folder into "destinatinon" folder
  4. New folder alias has generic document icon


Cleanup Symptom 1 : Finder refreshes folder alias icon to actual icon temporarily

  1. hold command key down
  2. click name of folder in destination folder
  3. traverse up one directory/folder level to open destination's parent folder
  4. (source, destination and destination folder's parent should be showing in Finder in icon view)
  5. close destination folder
  6. from destination parent folder, open destination folder
  7. Finder refreshes folder alias icon to actual icon temporarily


Symptom 2: Folder alias icon is blank document after restart of Finder

  1. Leave target, destination and destination parent folders open from Symtpom 1 reproduction
  2. Go to Apple Menu, select "Force Quit"
  3. Scroll to bottom, select Finder, press "Relaunch" button
  4. (Finder relaunches)
  5. Folder alias icon is blank document after restart of Finder


Cleanup Symptom 2

See Cleanup Symptom 1, start at step 5


Symptom 3: Folder alias icon is blank document after Mac reboot

  1. Leave target, destination and destination parent folders open from Symtpom 1 or 2 reproduction
  2. Reboot Mac
  3. Folder alias icon is blank document after Mac reboot


Cleanup Symptom 3

See Cleanup Symptom 1, start at step 5

It's way easier than listed above...

If your alias folder icons are blank after restart, simply right click each folder, select GET INFO, once the window pops up and shows the actual folder icon it should refresh and be correct on your desktop.