I removed the external drive icon on the macos, how do i put it back

external-diskfinderhard driveiconterminal

As per title, I decided I wanted to remove my external drive icon (the one that is shown, usually, on the desktop) on my mac, but now I'm not able to put it back.

The problem is not due to the finder preferences, as external drive IS ticked.

I remember doing it from the terminal with a command, but now I'm not able to revert that change.

I did try with the following commands with no luck:

defaults write com.apple.finder ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop -bool true
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowRemovableMediaOnDesktop -bool true

from this answer: How to show Hard Disk icon on Desktop via Terminal?

and I've also tried with this command:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true; killall Finder

from here: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/02/01/how-to-hide-device-icons-on-your-mac-desktop/

But neither worked.

Any help with this? I just want the drive icon to be on the desktop when the drive is connected, nothing more

Thanks for any help

Best Answer

You can reset these settings to their default values by deleting their keys.

defaults delete com.apple.finder ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop
defaults delete com.apple.finder ShowRemovableMediaOnDesktop
defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop
killall Finder

Note that the CreateDesktop key is for determining whether any icons are on screen, so if you are able to put other files on the Desktop then the problem is not with the CreateDesktop key's value.

Related Solutions

Where do these Terminal commands come from

Well, these commands edit .plist files in your /Users/xyz/Library/Preferences folder. So, if you look at these files, you can look at these files and base your Terminal commands after these.

These are XML-based files, so you can view them in a more readable format if you open them in Xcode, which is available in the Mac App Store.

In the Terminal, the format for these is "defaults write PLIST_FILE KEY -TYPE VALUE" where the PLIST_FILE is the name of the file in the Preferences folder without the .plist, KEY is the key that you can see in Xcode, -TYPE is the type of key that you can find Xcode (and you can find if there is an abbreviation for that type by typing "defaults" into the terminal), and value is the value you wish to set the key at.

Here are some of the string types from the Terminal:

-string <string_value>
-data <hex_digits>
-int[eger] <integer_value>
-float  <floating-point_value>
-bool[ean] (true | false | yes | no)
-date <date_rep>
-array <value1> <value2> ...
-array-add <value1> <value2> ...
-dict <key1> <value1> <key2> <value2> ...
-dict-add <key1> <value1> ...

External drive mounts but doesn’t appear in Finder anymore

With the help of Drobo's technical support who pointed me to this MacRumors thread, I've resolved the issue. It turned out that somehow my drive got set to "invisible", which is a filesystem attribute. I don't think this setting is settable via the Finder, so I'm not sure how it got set like that.

To confirm the issue, I had to install Xcode and then install the command line tools, then run this Terminal command:

GetFileInfo /Volumes/Drobo/

where /Volumes/Drobo/ is the path to the volume in question. This command returns all the attributes set for that volume. If the list of attributes includes a V (capital V), it means that the volume is invisible.

To fix it:

SetFile -a v /Volumes/Drobo/

with a lowercase v, to remove the invisible attribute.

After a reboot, everything was back to normal.

Note: depending on the drive and your permissions, it's possible you will need to run these commands with sudo, although I didn't.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Where do these Terminal commands come from

External drive mounts but doesn’t appear in Finder anymore

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