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General discussion

Lion icons won't stay put

Jul 31, 2011 8:03PM PDT

Since going to Lion, many icons in icon view won't stay put. I set arrange by none, sort by none and always open in icon view. This is also the default. This happens on the system drive and on mounted external drives. The issue is not consistent. Sometimes a folder will rearrange icon positions and sometimes it doesn't. Any ideas or just wait for a fix from Apple? As I recollect, there were flaky things about icon locations in 10.6 but they went away after a bit.

Discussion is locked

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Those mobile icons,
Jul 31, 2011 11:12PM PDT

may be wandering because they have no set place to be.
With arrange by none and sort by none I'm not surprised that they move.

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don't work for me...
Aug 3, 2011 8:20AM PDT

Unfortunately, I have two directories that have a large number of files where their placement is important. Arranging by name, etc. would totally negate my purpose. In any event, setting to "none" for arrange and sort has been in the past how you are able to determine your own custom positioning. Lion either has changed the rules in the Finder or there is one or more bugs in the new Finder. Time will tell.

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found that too with Snow Leopard...
Aug 5, 2011 5:27PM PDT

just to say that this problem is not just related to Lion OS. I have found that the icons in the Document window of our MBP wander around, and finally related this happening to the use of Disk Warrior to check the files and folders. I realized that after using it the positions changed and we had to re-arrange the icons once again.

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Same problem for me
Aug 19, 2011 1:12AM PDT

I have the same exact issue where both my Mac Book Pro and my Mac Pro have lost icon placement at random every so often. This NEVER happened before Lion, and it is now a HUGE issue for me since I have a ton of icons and my workflow demands their placement be organized by my own standards.

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Same probs for me, too
Aug 31, 2011 8:55AM PDT

Apple Forums/"Communities" have many such posts w same problem. I, too, have this problem of *both* icons not staying put despite replacing .DS Store (invisible) files AND, Finder settings not staying put or "sticking" either. I've seen much written about this in various places, but have read of no fixes within the OS itself. I'm deducing, therefore, that this is a 10.7.x problem. Let's hope it's fixed in OS X 10.7.2.
leewitt, above, is correct in stating that in the past choosing "setting to 'none' for arrange and sort has been .... how you are able to determine your own custom positioning." Custom positioning of icons that stay put has been and simply *has to remain* a Mac OS X feature. Apple, please help!!! Desktility is a little utility app that can help keep Desktop icons custom-arranged (as well as those in application windows), but it cannot reset Finder windows (main drive windows, etc).

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try Snap to Grid
Sep 3, 2011 10:26AM PDT

Although I'm still using Leopard, I've never had my icons move around.

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This is a problem of many users of the 10.7 Lion OS. Therefo
Sep 5, 2011 8:36AM PDT
This is a problem for many users of the 10.7 Lion OS, *not* a problem in SnoLeo. Therefore we'd like to hear fr any Lion user who may have a fix for this. "Snap to Grid" does not allow for complete user placement of icons, acc. to the user's liking, and therefore not helpful.
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Question to those who suffer from this "bug".
Sep 5, 2011 11:22AM PDT

What if you do not go for "view as icons" but go to "view as columns" in Finder view? Maybe the bug only concerns icon view? I always use column view as many users do and have no problems with icons moving. On the Desktop, arranging icons by name makes them staying put. The problem I have (not seen it really with previous cats) is that some icons do not show up on the desktop (they are transparent with no file kind picture), only the file title. Logging out and back on helps but not for long. Would love to have a permanent fix for that too.

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Icon view bug
Sep 5, 2011 8:28PM PDT

Clearly the poster wants to see his full icons, not the tiny view of them in other views. Same with my wife who has difficulty finding her way unless she can see large custom icons in the usual position predetermined by her in the Documents folder. It is a matter of aesthetic appreciation and of speed of use. Limiting frustration from unwanted clutter to a minimum.

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even more than that
Dec 11, 2012 11:45PM PST

arranging your information spatially is more than just aesthetic - it leverages our ability to remember where we left things, which becomes part of our process of retrieval.

there is NO benefit to seeing icons if they're arranged alphabetically, which is why most windows users hate "view by icon" (microsoft loves to arrange them alphabetically for you).

but being able to group files arbitrarily by project or whatever is a powerful feature that should not get lost in the mac/win/ios convergence.

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unhelpful
Dec 11, 2012 11:27PM PST

the purpose of moving icons around in the icon view is to arrange your files on the screen in a logical (to you) order.

spatial position is another attribute that can help organize, and retrieve, complex information.

unfortunately, microsoft has never "gotten" the idea of a user interface, and thus they inflicted "column view" on the world. (once upon a time, children, macos only had "icon" and "list" views.) somehow, the idea of devoting most of my screen space to displaying where i've been, rather than where i am, is a waste. but it shows an excessive preoccupation with "the path", and is just a reflection of a cumbersome (and poorly thought-out) file system which makes it far too easy to get lost.

apple's adoption of column view is a concession to the windows world, and one which most diehard mac users find bizarre.

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Show view options
Apr 11, 2012 7:39AM PDT

Hey guys,

Not sure if this is a real fix or not, but I just corrected this problem for two different folders on my Mac that kept auto-sorting the files inside them. I clicked on the little gear menu and then "show view options". I then had to set 'arrange by' AND 'sort by' to 'none'. Then my custom icon arrangement was magically back!

I'm not super techy and I don't know if this has already been tried, but it worked for these two folders and I am SO happy to get my custom icon arrangement back. Hope it works for others too!!

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Leopard and Disk Warrior
Sep 5, 2011 8:23PM PDT

Have you tried to see what happens to icon positioning after you use Disk Warrior? Our icons haven't wandered since the last DW check, which reinforces my feeling that wandering in Leopard is an exception linked to using certain applications, whereas with Lion the problem would appear to be far more common. Of course there might be some application in the Lion system itself that causes it, rather than an customer-added one as would seem to be the case with Snow Leopard.

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worked for me -- kind of
Jul 30, 2012 8:15AM PDT

For me, icons would only stay in the arrangement I wanted until I logged out and back in -- then they'd revert. What worked for me was, in View Options, to "arrange by" none (and snap to grid). Choose "Use as Defaults." Then -- and this was the critical part -- have another folder open, not the one you're trying to rearrange. Then restart.
But this won't work with folders you don't have read/write access to.

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update
Jul 31, 2012 10:45AM PDT

To update my previous post:
I found that I didn't even have to choose a specific icon arrangement in View Options. The critical part, as before, was to have another folder open, not the one you're trying to rearrange. Then restart (though just logging out and back in might work, but I want to make sure it will stick upon restart).