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Missing Network icon from Finder

Big Ron

Big Ron

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 7, 2012
425
106
United Kingdom
Afternoon from the Eastern side of the 'Pond".

Desperate for help so anything would be mostly appreciated.

Long story short I have somehow lost the Network icon from the sidebar in Finder on my M1 MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.5 (24F74).

This is stopping me from connecting to my 'Big Mac' - the one with my attached archive drives/music/media etc.

Weird thing is - If I look for my MacBook Pro from my 'Big Mac' the Network icon is there and I can connect to it without issues.

I haven't loaded any new software lately and as far as I can remember, I haven't changed any System settings.

I'm at a loss as what to do next - I don't want to go for the 'nuclear option' of a Time Machine backup because I would like to know what happened, how to fix it and more importantly how to avoid this happening again.

Thanks in advance.

Ron T - Scotland
 
In Finder > Settings, under the Sidebar tab, turn on "Connected Servers".

If that doesn't work, you can browse to "My Computer" (keep pressing Command Up until you get there!).

From there, you'll see the Network icon, and you can drag it into the sidebar.

There of course plenty of other ways of accessing network connections, apart from the sidebar!
 
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benwiggy said:
In Finder > Settings, under the Sidebar tab, turn on "Connected Servers".

If that doesn't work, you can browse to "My Computer" (keep pressing Command Up until you get there!).

From there, you'll see the Network icon, and you can drag it into the sidebar.

There of course plenty of other ways of accessing network connections, apart from the sidebar!
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the speedy reply. I can see the Network icon but when I try to drag it to the side bar it won't stick. I can drag it to my desktop but when I click on it, it says it is connecting but never does.
 
Big Ron said:
Thanks for the speedy reply. I can see the Network icon but when I try to drag it to the side bar it won't stick. I can drag it to my desktop but when I click on it, it says it is connecting but never does.
Click to expand...
Erase and reinstall is probably a best option
 
Bigwaff said:
Unnecessary. @Big Ron You probably collapsed "Locations". Slowly hover you mouse over "Locations" in the side bar and move mouse slowly to the right until you see a ">" appear. Click it.
Click to expand...
Hi BigWaff. I do have 'Locations' expanded thanks. The plot thickens - when I have my PC switched on, the Network icon is present in my macBook's Finder and I can attach to my PC and all of its shared drives. What I can't do is connect to my Big Mac when it is switched on. If I restart my Big Mac , Finder on my MacBook Pro shows the Network icon and when I click on it it shows my Big Mac as available however; when I try to connect to it it just shows connecting and nothing ever happens so I'm now thinking could it be a permissions access issue/problem on my Big Mac?

Any further thoughts would be appreciated.
 
Big Ron said:
Mmmmmm last resort
Click to expand...
No. The OS is on a separate, read-only volume, and it's the same disk image on every Mac. If it's been altered, it won't boot. Reinstalling may do incidental things that fix your problem, like 'restarting', or clearing caches; but you're not repairing the OS in any way.

Everything that you do on your Mac goes on the Data volume, which can be erased to give a 'factory' wipe from System Settings.


But: the contents of the sidebar are stored in a .plist file in the user Library -- most likely com.apple.finder.plist. The most extreme fix is deleting this file. Nothing more.
 
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