Downloads icon has a Question Mark

[ivanwi11iams]

Upon logging into my MBA this morning, I noticed there was a QUESTION MARK, in place of where my Downloads folder icon resides, on the Dock.

I am able to open the folder, and have since deleted the icon, and recreated the Downloads folder icon.
Alas, my question is, what caused the QUESTION MARK icon in the first place?

Specs:
MacBook Air 13-inch (Early 2015)
Memory: 8GB
Processor: 1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536MB
Storage: 251GB flash storage
OS: Big Sur

 

[ivanwi11iams]

Anyone, any ideas about the above question...?

 

[PhoneI]

Delete icon in dock. Drag downloads folder from finder back into the dock.

 

[DeltaMac]

Hard to give an answer, but the (?) on the dock icon just means that the dock app lost track of the location of the downloads folder. You did the right fix to get it back in working order.
If you really want a wild guess - it's likely a bug or glitch in Big Sur. You could report that to Apple, and it could be something that is already on the "fix" list in some future Big Sur update.
I have not noticed others posting about an issue similar to yours, so probably not any kind of wide-spread problem. Just one of those weird glitches that happen occasionally in any operating system. And, you know how to easily correct it... There you go!

 

[ivanwi11iams]

Hard to give an answer, but the (?) on the dock icon just means that the dock app lost track of the location of the downloads folder. You did the right fix to get it back in working order.
If you really want a wild guess - it's likely a bug or glitch in Big Sur. You could report that to Apple, and it could be something that is already on the "fix" list in some future Big Sur update.
I have not noticed others posting about an issue similar to yours, so probably not any kind of wide-spread problem. Just one of those weird glitches that happen occasionally in any operating system. And, you know how to easily correct it... There you go!

Brilliant, thanks. Oddly, I do wish I had left the MBA on the previous OS (whatever it was; not my MBA, so not sure what the OS was), and then learned Mac OS with that version, prior to upgrading...

 

[mikethebigo]

For what it's worth, the downloads icon on my dock has also had some weird behavior in Big Sur on a new M1 Mac. Until its first reboot, the download animation was going to the safari menu bar instead of the normal folder on the dock, and the dock folder wasn't showing the correct progress bar during a download.

So I'd wager to say it's just glitchy and I wouldn't be too fussed about it.