Desktop icon missing from home folder

[atlendor]

Hello Folks

I have an odd problem that I hope someone can help out with.

I seem to have 'lost' my Desktop folder in the Finder. Everything else is listed (documents, etc) but the Desktop is not. It appears (and works) in Places on the sidebar, and I can use terminal to navigate to it.

Has anyone come across this before? I tried 'chflags nohidden ~/' in terminal in case it was hidden, but no luck....

 

[mackindergarten]

Hi!

Open the Desktop from the Sidebar. Then, from the View menu, pick Show Path Bar, to display the path to the folder at the lower end of the window.

Hope this sheds light on your problem.

/Rupert

 

[wrldwzrd89]

From the Terminal, try this:

ls -l ~

then

ls -la ~

Besides the . and .. folders, which you'll always see when you add the -a option to the ls command, do you see any other folders in the second listing that don't appear in the first?

 

[atlendor]

Thanks... but perhaps you miss-understand. The actual icon does not appear in my home folder, even though it does exist...

 

[mackindergarten]

So, you mean there is no folder named Desktop in your home folder? Or is the icon (the Desktop icon, superimposed on a normal folder icon) is missing and Desktop is displayed as regular folder?

 

[atlendor]

Yes that's correct. I can get to it in terminal, and obviously all my data is there on the actual desktop, but there is not folder/icon there in the finder window (I did try and attach a screen grab, but only the link showed up on the post preview).

A while back, I did come across an apple script to remedy this issue, and it worked. Unfortunately I cant find it now, no amount of googling seems to find it. Should have saved it really!

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Did you try 'chflags nohidden ~/Desktop' instead of 'chflags nohidden ~/'? The second command unhides your user folder, the first one the Desktop folder inside your user folder.

 

[atlendor]

No I didn't... but I just did. And it worked like a charm! Many thanks. Clearly my 1990's era IRIX UNIX experience wasn't up to the job today!

Cheers

 

[cfloresdp]

desktop icon and folder erased!

I am having a similar problem. Unfortunately I am unfamiliar with terminal and what not. Not too savvy with this kind of stuff.

I'll explain what happened.. Under Home, I accidently replaced the "Desktop" Folder with a regular folder that was also named Desktop. Now I don't have the "real" Desktop Folder under Home, and the Desktop icon has disappeared from the sidebar. Now the actual desktop is inactive.. I'm unable to place items or create folders on the desktop because an error occurs. Have i totally eliminated my Desktop!?!? Please help!

 

[mackindergarten]

One solution would be to create a new user and migrate your files over.

 

[cfloresdp]

Right on.. so simple. Thanks Mack!