MacOS – Mavericks Dock icons have become corrupted. Is there a cache to flush or a database to rebuild

dockiconmacos

I'm running OS X Mavericks 10.9.1. Some of my Dock icons for running applications, including the Finder icon, now appear blank and empty, or as a square filled with random noise pixels.

I have tried "Verify Disk" in Recovery mode, and it detects no errors. I have Repaired Permissions and rebooted.

Is there some cache to flush or database to rebuild that could fix this seemingly harmless but annoying anomaly?

Best Answer

In case you don't want to use some "cache cleaner app" then just try doing it manually from the terminal with these three commands followed by a reboot:

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;

sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store

or

Alternatively a single boot into Safe Mode once could/should clear out some caches.

Worked For Me™ in Sierra (10.12)

Related Solutions

MacOS – simple way to have separate dock icons for different Chrome Profiles

For having two Chrome running at the same time you need to create a second runnable Google Chrome App.

You can create that second application by running the following script. It comes from this site, I copy and paste for readers' convenience:

#!/bin/bash

PROFILE_NAME=$1
mkdir -p "/Applications/Google Chrome $1.app/Contents/MacOS"

F="/Applications/Google Chrome $1.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome $1"
cat > "$F" <<\EOF
#!/bin/bash

#
# Google Chrome for Mac with additional profile.
#

# Name your profile:
EOF

echo "PROFILE_NAME='$PROFILE_NAME'\n" >> "$F"

cat >> "$F" <<\EOF
# Store the profile here:
PROFILE_DIR="/Users/$USER/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/${PROFILE_NAME}"

# Find the Google Chrome binary:
CHROME_APP=$(mdfind 'kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier == "com.google.Chrome"' | head -1)
CHROME_BIN="$CHROME_APP/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
if [[ ! -e "$CHROME_BIN" ]]; then
  echo "ERROR: Can not find Google Chrome.  Exiting."
  exit -1
fi

# Start me up!
exec "$CHROME_BIN" --enable-udd-profiles --user-data-dir="$PROFILE_DIR"
EOF

sudo chmod +x "$F"

Save it in a file (let's say create_second_chrome.sh in the Desktop folder), open the shell and execute it by passing as parameter the profile folder you want to associate to the second Chrome App. It will be called Google Chrome profile_folder_name. Let's suppose Google Chrome Development:

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ . create_second_chrome.sh Development

Now you can launch the new version of Chrome (Google Chrome Development) from the ~/Applications directory. You can set a different icon by right-clicking on the app and selecting 'Get Info'. You will see that this new version has its own icon on the dock and can be docked there if needed.

MacOS – OS X 10.8.5: Can I move icons around in the dock and not have them stay there when the apps are closed

You can remove all closed apps from the Dock (even if they are set to 'Keep in Dock') with the following command:

defaults delete com.apple.dock static-only

You can assign a hotkey to run this, or set up a launch agent to run this regularly.

Best Answer

or

Related Solutions

MacOS – simple way to have separate dock icons for different Chrome Profiles

MacOS – OS X 10.8.5: Can I move icons around in the dock and not have them stay there when the apps are closed

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