Chosen Solution
All of the icons on my macbook air desktop have disappeared, but they still appear elsewhere. Any ideas on how to fix this problem?
It appears your shortcuts have lost there linkage back to the original files which is why you are seeing the generic icon vs the discrete icon the app or document would normally have. This could be caused by moving or renaming the folder or the volume the original file was located. To fix this you will need to open each shortcut and relink the original file. Right click the icon and then select Get Info Within the general section note the Original entry see if you can figure out what changed. If you see the error you may find fixing the Folder or Volume path easier than fixing all of the discrete shortcuts. If you can’t fix the pathing, you’ll need to use the Select New Original button to relocate the file. The other option here is to locate the files and just make new shortcuts. Often when I see this when nothing has been altered the HD’s Btree tables need repair. I would strongly recommend you boot up under an external disk and run Disk Utility to fix both the permissions and the drive. You may need to run it though a few times to get all of the errors fixed and you still may need to boot up under single user for the desktop to get rebuilt as well. But before you do this make sure you have a good backup! Lastly, you may want to defrag your HD as the table maybe badly fragmented. I like Drive Genius, there are others but I’ve found this is one of the better ones. Just make sure to do this last if you have a HD vs a SSD. If you have a SSD you won’t have fragmentation.
I found all of mine under Finder/Home/iCloud Drive (archive)/Desktop. No idea why they disappeared but I just dragged them back out of that folder and onto the desktop.
If all of your icons have disappeared on your Mac chances are you simply moved to another desktop or workspace. Click on “Mission Control” or search if your dock is missing as well, here you should be able to see the desktop with the icons. Hope this helps!
What worked for me on my Mac was just to go to Finder and open it. It solved the problem right there. Everything was available again.
Go under the Apple in the upper left hand corner to Dock. Turn off hiding.
Hi, Follow the below steps to get back your desktop lost data. Finder > iCloud Drive (Archive) > Desktop > Copy the data and paste it your Mac Desktop. It worked for me. Thanks!
hey guys, I need some help too… I created two user accounts on my MacBook Pro 2011, I’m running MacOS High Sierra, however when you delete an account then the computer has to restart when it did, My computer isn’t showing me any icons at all, not even the dock. All I’m seeing is a desktop wallpaper.
