Clear the icon cache on a Mac when you start seeing generic icons in Finder or the Dock

mac-clear-icon-cache.sh

sudo rm -rfv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store; sudo find /private/var/folders/ \( -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -or -name com.apple.iconservices \) -exec rm -rfv {} \; ; sleep 3;sudo touch /Applications/* ; killall Dock; killall Finder

that works.

Thank you so much! Fixed it in a matter of seconds.

The touch command effectively does nothing (since they are all directories) so you can lose that part

Help! It made it worse! Instead of just Stickies having a generic icon, now Safari, Mail, Messages and Daylite all have generic icons too!

Suggestions anyone?

Hey, @ismyrnow. The command you posted initially made the situation way worse on my 2018 MBP, but after a couple of restarts many icons since slowly returned - including Stickies - either after restarting the computer or subsequent launches of the app, but some have remained stubbornly generic. Messages for example. Can you help?

@ismyrnow. UPDATE: All my app icons have since restored themselves, gradually. Most if not all the remaining ones repopulated when the app in question was opened.

most of them didn't fix and the error is this:
touch: /Applications/(name of an app).app: Operation not permitted

I made an account just to thank you op. I screwed up my Pock icons by clearing the cache and have no knowledge of how these things work

thanks. it works on Mojave 10.14.6

Not working for me in Catalina :( Still seeing generic icons for my video media associated with IINA

Fixed my white icon problem for .rar files on Catalina 10.15.4
Thanks!

Didn't work for me, but then again I have a slightly different problem - my app icon is showing up on top of the generic document icon.

Anyone knows how I can remove that white paper behind the icon?

My PDFs look just as ugly. I even tried replacing the .icns file in Adobe Acrobat.app/Contents/Resources - no such luck. For whatever the reason it always shows a white sheet of paper behind the icon.

However I did find this:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/acrobat-icon-displayed-incorrectly/td-p/11154816?page=1

The same thing is currently happening with me, as with @shanshine-01 but in my case it is with Word. The only way I have been able to fix it is with manually changing with icon in Get Info. No idea what to do.

OSX Catalina, my Thunderbird icon had disappeared. Tried this and, although numerous Operation Not Permitted messages, the t/bird icon reappeared. Great!

I've a blank icon in the Finder
for the Time Machine's drive.
I've shortened your command
but it didn't work as expected.

sudo sh -c "rm -frv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store;\
find /private/var/folders/ -name 'com.apple.*icon*' -exec rm -frv {} \;"

It even made the specific Google Drive Icon disappear...
although it came back by just restarting the Finder again.

My girlfriend updated to Big Sur two weeks ago, and recently her Dock icons disappeared, together with some icons in the system preferences pane. Running the suggestion at the beginning of this thread:

sudo rm -rfv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store; sudo find /private/var/folders/ ( -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -or -name com.apple.iconservices ) -exec rm -rfv {} ; ; sleep 3;sudo touch /Applications/* ; killall Dock; killall Finder

did fix the Dock icons. Let's hope that she will be spared from more initial Big Sur bugs, happy I didn't update yet... Any other suggestions are welcome!

Worked for me, Mojave 10.14.6, thanks!

Thanks a bunch! All my css files had somehow gotten associated with Tor and the onion wouldn't go away from the file icons even when I associated them with sublime editor by force. This helped get rid of the Tor onion and get the sublime icon.

Does this clear the cache for all user accounts or only the one you run it under? (Update: never mind, it does!!! It’s fixed!)

Thanks for this.

Works fine !

Thank you! It works for macOS 12.3!

this fixed my files set to open with VLC having generic white icons :D

I also did this brew cask install qlvideo >D

The OP didn't help me, but installing qlvideo does work as a workaround, on macOS 13.0 Ventura. (though the command has changed)

brew install --cask qlvideo

It worked for me. Thanks for sharing.

I'm on a MacBook Pro 16-inch 2023 (M2 Max) with macOS 13.3.1.

Worked for me on 14.5 beta on M2 MBA. Thanks!

Running the sudo rm -rfv /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store command was enough for me (plus running sudo killall Dock; killall Finder). It makes sense to remove a cache. On the other side, I see very dangerous to remove anything from inside the /private/ folder, which is a sensible folder for the stability of the operating system.