There’ll always be bugs, you can count of that.
Per CNET, a number of Snow Leopard users have been complaining of blurry and pixelated icons showing up in the Finder. A thread on the Apple Discussion Board outlines this issue, where instead of the large and crisp icons that are so prominent in OS X, the system shows grainy and low-resolution versions of them, regardless of the icon size being used.
Mac OS X icon files are actually comprised of several files in one, each which represents a different version of the icon from low resolution to high resolution. This is so the system will not always load the high-resolution versions if the icon size does not call for it.
Potential fixes for this issue include the following:
An application called BlueHarvest allows users to repair the DS_Store files that might be causing this issue. The program can be located and downloaded here.
Remove system and user caches:
Additionally, you can try using a system maintenance tool to remove all user and system caches. This can be done with a utility like OnyX, and I would recommend tackling the following system caches:
dyld’s shared cache
All “System” cleaning routines
All “User” cleaning routines
After removing the caches, restart the computer.
Additionally, removing the Finder’s preference file may also help, since icon rendering is a function of the Finder. The preference file is called “com.apple.Finder.plist” and is located in the /username/Library/Preferences/ folder. Move this to the Desktop and restart the computer (or logout and log back in) and hopefully the Finder will load the icons properly again. Keep in mind that doing this will remove a few customizations of the the Finder, including sidebar additions and recent items, but that should be easy to set up again.
If you’ve seen this issue on your end, let us know.
4 replies on “How-To: Repair Fuzzy Icons in Snow Leopard”
Unfortunately none of these methods of fixing this problem are permanent … if you create custom icons (copying and pasting onto folders especially) the problem will eventually come back … something goes corrupt and you’ll get what appears to be low resolution icons, such as 32 x 32 or 16 x 16 pixels, that are enlarged or blown up in size.
Thanks for the tip and advice
I noticed that issue after almost every upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard. A safe boot to clear out the caches fixed the problem everytime.
Nice post, it will help a lot in creating my research papers.