When Finder won’t update a folder icon

How Finder stores a folder icon

A picture you paste onto a folder is saved in two places: a hidden file named Icon inside the folder, which holds the picture, and a flag on the folder itself that tells Finder to use it. We checked this on a Mac running macOS 27.0.1. Finder needs both. With only one of them, the folder shows the standard blue icon, and that explains most of the “icon disappeared” cases below.

Since macOS 26, Finder can also give a folder a color, a symbol or an emoji with Customize Folder. Those are stored in a different way, behave differently with iCloud, and can hide a pasted picture.

Set a custom icon

1. Open the image in Preview and choose Edit›, then Copy. This copies the picture, not the file.
2. In Finder, select the folder and choose File›, then Get Info.
3. Click the small icon at the top of the Info window, below the title bar.
4. Choose Edit›, then Paste.

If Paste is dimmed, you probably clicked the large preview lower in the window. The picture replaces the whole icon and isn’t fitted into a folder shape, so if you want it to look like a folder, the image has to include one.

To remove a custom icon, select the same small icon and choose Edit›, then Cut. Many people press Delete instead; Apple’s guide documents Cut.

[TODO: check on screen whether the Delete key removes the icon on macOS 27]

Fixes, most common first

The folder shows a generic image icon

You copied the image file in Finder rather than the picture in it, so Finder used the file’s own icon. Open the image in Preview, choose Edit›, then Copy there, and paste again.

Finder still shows the old icon

This is the one nobody explains. When you replace one custom icon with another, Finder often keeps drawing the old one, even though the new one is saved. In our testing it happened every time on a Desktop synced with iCloud. Finder only picks up the new icon after it has seen the folder without one. An Apple engineer gave developers the same advice on Apple’s developer forums: clear the icon first, then set the new one.

1. In Get Info, select the small icon and choose Edit›, then Cut.
2. Wait a second or two, so Finder shows the plain folder.
3. Paste the new picture with Edit›, then Paste.

If it’s still stale, close the Finder window and open it again. If that doesn’t help, relaunch Finder: press Option-Command-Esc, select Finder in the Force Quit window, and click Relaunch. You don’t need to restart or clear any caches.

The folder has a color, symbol or emoji

A symbol or emoji from Customize Folder takes priority. When we gave a test folder both an emoji and a pasted picture on macOS 27, macOS drew the emoji. Open Customize Folder from the folder’s Control-click menu, remove the symbol or emoji, then paste the picture again.

[TODO: confirm in Finder that the emoji wins, and how to remove a symbol or emoji in Customize Folder (reportedly a Clear button)]

It works the other way too. If you choose a symbol or emoji for a folder that has a pasted picture, Finder asks to remove the picture first. Remove and Customize deletes it, and that can’t be undone. Keep Current Icon leaves it alone.

Colors come from tags, and they don’t tint a pasted picture. If you don’t want tags to color your plain folders, turn off Finder›, then Settings›, then Tags›, then Tint folders based on tags.

The folder is in iCloud Drive

Pasted pictures don’t sync through iCloud Drive. They show on the Mac where you pasted them and nowhere else, and that includes Desktop and Documents folders synced with iCloud. Turning Desktop and Documents syncing off and on again has been reported to remove them too. Colors, symbols and emoji from Customize Folder do sync to your other Macs.

For folders you use on more than one Mac, use Customize Folder. Keep pasted pictures for folders that stay on one Mac, and keep the source images so you can paste them again.

The folder is in Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive

Dropbox lists Icon\r, the hidden icon file, among the files it can’t sync, so other computers get the folder without its picture. After macOS 26.1, people on Apple’s forums also reported folders in Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive losing their icons on the Mac itself. Relaunching Finder or restarting brought them back for some.

The folder was copied, backed up or zipped

Some tools keep the hidden icon file but drop the flag on the folder, or the other way round. Either way the folder turns blue again. Here is what we saw on macOS 27.0.1:

If a backup script uses rsync -a, add -E. For a folder that has already lost its icon, paste the picture again; that writes both parts.

The folder is locked or read-only

In Get Info, make sure Locked isn’t selected, and that Sharing & Permissions says you can read and write. You can customize your Home folder, but not the folders that come with your Mac, such as Applications, Library, System and Users.

Icons disappeared after a macOS update

After macOS 26.4, many people reported custom icons going back to plain folders, mostly on Intel Macs. The icons were still saved, and they came back after updating to macOS 26.4.1 and restarting. If it happens after an update, install the latest one and restart before you paste anything again.

Folder icons with MacScapes

MacScapes can give your folders pattern icons that match your wallpaper’s palette. It writes them the same way Finder writes a pasted picture, and it clears the old icon and waits before setting a new one, so Finder doesn’t show a stale icon. It keeps a list of the folders it changed so you can reset them, and the icons stay after you remove the app, so reset any you don’t want first. Because they’re stored like pasted pictures, they don’t sync to your other Macs through iCloud. More on the folder icons page.