Place a checkmark next to the items you wish to display on the desktop. In the Finder Preferences window that opens, click the 'General' tab. From the menu bar, select 'Finder Preferences'. Click on the Finder icon on your desktop. In most cases, icons are lost due to accidental deletion or because some application overwrites the desktop display settings. Luckily, you can show the disappeared Mac desktop icons by using either of the following methods.

Mac icons disappear usually happens after macOS installation or upgrade. If a restart doesn't work, refer to the following points to see if you can restore disappeared files and icons from the desktop. The false operation that deletes items on Macĭon't panic when you first find the files and icons disappeared, restart your Mac and check if these items are displayed again. Default settings of Finder that makes no icons and items appear on Mac desktop macOS or Mac OS X update causes Mac desktop icons and items lost You might be confused about why the files and icons on your Mac desktop got missing. Why Did Everything on My Desktop Disappear on Mac? No matter which dilemma you have stuck in, you can find solutions on this page and make your Mac desktop icon showing and restore all missing files on your own. There are two common cases of content disappeared on the Mac desktop, one is having everything disappeared, and the other is only desktop files got disappeared. Full stepsĮverything on My Mac Desktop Disappeared, Help To fix the problem, open the Terminal application (located inside the /Applications/Utilities folder), then type in one of these commands, followed by the Return key.Method 2.

We'll use the Terminal to make the fix, since it's fairly easy and requires no additional downloads or software that you'll probably only use infrequently. Fortunately, this is a fairly easy fix, and it only requires moderate mucking about in Terminal (or if you prefer, a dedicated application like Cocktail or TinkerTool). Is there any way to alter these apps to show previews in the icons? AnswerĪs you use your Mac and install multiple versions of applications onto the system, there can come a day where the icon association that the operating system stores for use with applications gets corrupted or is incorrect and out of date. After updating to iWork 13, I've noticed that document icons for Pages and Numbers don't show the new icon previews, even when that option is selected and older Pages and Numbers docs show previews.

How to show mac desktop icons