Time Machine icon (green) missing

[adamcarvell]

I have the same problem after upgrading to El Capitan. I recommend that everyone with this problem go to Apple Feedback for OS X and make a bug report.

I had the same bug after upgrading from Mountain Lion to Mavericks (Apple's worst OS in years). I was never able to fix it, But When I upgraded to Yosemite, it fixed everything. Now, with my recent upgrade to El Capitan, all the Mavericks bugs are back.

 

[adamcarvell]

i unticked the box show drives on the desktop then re enabled it . went green again

 

[stema76]

Hi everybody!
I just subscribed this forum because of the same issue on my iMac with El Capitan.
For sure it's not a "major issue" since the most important thing is that backups work properly, but (for me) it's very annoying.
I installed El Capitan as an upgrade of Yosemite and I think this is the problem.
As far as I remember this issue occurred each time I upgraded the OS to the new one (from ML to Mavericks, from Mavericks to Yosemite and now to El Capitan).
So yesterday I made this experiment: I took my wife's macbook pro - officially my test environment - and I installed El Capitan from scratch; after that I took a USB external hard drive and I set it as the TM volume and ... the green TM icon started working again !
The only one "issue" (but it was the same with Yosemite) is that when I restart the Mac the TM icon is shown in orange, but as soon as a backup completes it switches automatically to the green one.
Let's say ... better than nothing ...
In my opinion, in order to avoid "previous OS garbage", the best thing would be to install major releases by formatting the Mac but ... I know ... it's very bothering.

Ciao !

 

[adamcarvell]

i unticked the box show drives on the desktop then re enabled it . went green again

but it only lasts till reboot then its orange again !!!.

 

[11Al]

i unticked the box show drives on the desktop then re enabled it . went green again

but it only lasts till reboot then its orange again !!!.

You need an app like LiteIcon to assign the right icon to drive TM.

 

[BacktoMacNJ]

i unticked the box show drives on the desktop then re enabled it . went green again

Worked for me -- btw, this is in finder/preferences

 

[rachalmers]

I have the same problem after upgrading to El Capitan. I recommend that everyone with this problem go to Apple Feedback for OS X and make a bug report.

I had the same bug after upgrading from Mountain Lion to Mavericks (Apple's worst OS in years). I was never able to fix it, But When I upgraded to Yosemite, it fixed everything. Now, with my recent upgrade to El Capitan, all the Mavericks bugs are back.

I tried your fix, but under properties, i see no green TM icon. Cannot get a green icon at all. Tried deleting and then adding the drive in Time Machine preferences, no dice.

 

[rachalmers]

Right click on the TimeMachine icon on the desktop. Get Info will come up as an option, the third option down in the list.
Click on Get Info.
The Window Pane for Get Info will come up on your screen. Most often on the left.
At the very top left of this window pane there is a little green icon, the Time Machine icon. It will have the name of your Time Machine drive next to it.
Lower down, second from the bottom of that window, is the word Preview. It has an arrow next to it. Click on the arrow and it will show you a picture of a Green timeMachine drive. Hover over that with the pointer, and click your mouse button, keeping it down, drag that image up to the top and hover it over the little image at the top of the open window. Your actual TimeMachine name right. When you see the plus arrow appear (+) let go the mouse, and you may have to type in the password, and it will replace your yellow icon on the main screen, with the Green Icon.

 

[BacktoMacNJ]

Right click on the TimeMachine icon on the desktop. Get Info will come up as an option, the third option down in the list.
Click on Get Info.
The Window Pane for Get Info will come up on your screen. Most often on the left.
At the very top left of this window pane there is a little green icon, the Time Machine icon. It will have the name of your Time Machine drive next to it.
Lower down, second from the bottom of that window, is the word Preview. It has an arrow next to it. Click on the arrow and it will show you a picture of a Green timeMachine drive. Hover over that with the pointer, and click your mouse button, keeping it down, drag that image up to the top and hover it over the little image at the top of the open window. Your actual TimeMachine name right. When you see the plus arrow appear (+) let go the mouse, and you may have to type in the password, and it will replace your yellow icon on the main screen, with the Green Icon.

I'm gonna try that and see if it sticks.

 

[xray_spex]

under the heading of "Apple Weirdness" I moved my old 3TB My Book to my new Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is running Yosemite I also added an 8 TB My Book Pro to the line up. Now the 3 TB that was operating under Snow Leopard 10.6.8 shows green but the 8TB shows orange.

 

[1251division]

Right click on the TimeMachine icon on the desktop. Get Info will come up as an option, the third option down in the list.
Click on Get Info.
The Window Pane for Get Info will come up on your screen. Most often on the left.
At the very top left of this window pane there is a little green icon, the Time Machine icon. It will have the name of your Time Machine drive next to it.
Lower down, second from the bottom of that window, is the word Preview. It has an arrow next to it. Click on the arrow and it will show you a picture of a Green timeMachine drive. Hover over that with the pointer, and click your mouse button, keeping it down, drag that image up to the top and hover it over the little image at the top of the open window. Your actual TimeMachine name right. When you see the plus arrow appear (+) let go the mouse, and you may have to type in the password, and it will replace your yellow icon on the main screen, with the Green Icon.

This worked for me under El Capitan. The trick for me was first going into Time Machine Preferences; Select Disk; then click your TM drive under Available Disks (not the one listed under Backup Disks, even though it's the same drive). Let Time Machine run through it's first backup on the new system; then follow the directions quoted above. My green icon has persisted through restarts ever since.

 

[PopPop679]

I have found it?

I recently set up TM with a Seagate USB 3.0 External drive to my iMac. After set up the green Time Machine Icon showed on the drive icon but after I rebooted the icon disappeared and turned yellow.

To fix this I went into Get Info for the external drive and under the "Preview:" section it showed the TM icon, which I clicked and dragged to the top of Get Info and overlayed the yellow icon. All good now

[doublepost=1456433884][/doublepost]Wow Beltor thanks for figuring this out. I spent about 2 hours with 2nd level Apple support only to be in the same place I started out. Sometimes things require simple fixes. Thanks again.

 

[steveclicque]

Using various external drives for TM throughout all of the mountain OSs this has regularly occurred to me. If I >Finder>View >Show View Options (command j) and uncheck then recheck show icon preview the green almost always returns immediately.

 

[anp27]

Right click on the TimeMachine icon on the desktop. Get Info will come up as an option, the third option down in the list.
Click on Get Info.
The Window Pane for Get Info will come up on your screen. Most often on the left.
At the very top left of this window pane there is a little green icon, the Time Machine icon. It will have the name of your Time Machine drive next to it.
Lower down, second from the bottom of that window, is the word Preview. It has an arrow next to it. Click on the arrow and it will show you a picture of a Green timeMachine drive. Hover over that with the pointer, and click your mouse button, keeping it down, drag that image up to the top and hover it over the little image at the top of the open window. Your actual TimeMachine name right. When you see the plus arrow appear (+) let go the mouse, and you may have to type in the password, and it will replace your yellow icon on the main screen, with the Green Icon.

This recently helped me, thank you.

 

[Buzzy Smith]

I have found it?

I recently set up TM with a Seagate USB 3.0 External drive to my iMac. After set up the green Time Machine Icon showed on the drive icon but after I rebooted the icon disappeared and turned yellow.

To fix this I went into Get Info for the external drive and under the "Preview:" section it showed the TM icon, which I clicked and dragged to the top of Get Info and overlayed the yellow icon. All good now

[doublepost=1537722400][/doublepost]Thanks! (9 years later.)