MacOS – Why does the Network icon in the Finder sidebar in Lion have no function on the Mac

airdropfindermacos

Since installing Lion on my Late 2007 MacBook Pro, which cannot support AirDrop, an icon called "Network" has appeared under Favorites in my Finder sidebar. This icon seems to have no function. Clicking on it only reveals the error message

"Network" can't be opened because the original item can't be found.

There is also no option to disable its appearance in Finder Preferences.

The Network icon seems to disappear on occasion, only to reappear later.

I can find no documentation of this mysterious icon, and no reference to its existence anywhere.

Can anyone suggest what this icon is and why it is being displayed?

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Addendum: Note that there are indeed other network computers visible on my LAN in the finder, whereas the little gray Network icon in the Sidebar does not display any of them.

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Note that there is no item named "Network" for me to remove in my Finder preferences:

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Best Answer

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

In Terminal, run the following command. You should find the word Network mentioned at least once in your .plist preference file:

defaults read com.apple.sidebarlists | grep Network

Applicability

As I can't drag Network to my Finder sidebar — and as sidebar takes a different approach to showing shared items — I guess that:

  • in Lion, Network is no longer applicable in the FAVORITES part of the sidebar
  • maybe for you, Network was amongst sidebar favourites in a previous version of the operating system.

Removing unwanted items from the property list

Probably easiest with Xcode.

If you don't have Xcode, then use TextWrangler or anything that's capable of editing this type of property list.

Identifying items in the .plist

Xcode views of the property list:

Xcode view of the property list with all items collapsed Xcode view of the property list with three of five word matches visible

A TextWrangler view:

TextWrangler view of the properly list with all word matches visible

To view Network, with or without the sidebar

⇧⌘K

In the sidebar

  1. show SHARED
  2. click All…

screenshot of Finder, 'All…' presenting Network

If the option 'All…' does not appear

First try removing, from the property list, unwanted or redundant items relating to Network.

A guess: it may be necessary to quit Finder, or log out, before some types of change become effective.

If following removals and a log out you find that SHARED is still without All…, consider asking a separate question.

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