Everything disappears, except for local drives. Weird. I have to open Finder to have them pop back on the desktop.

Um, a 'feature'?

Oh, not the contents of folders is disappearing too. I have to click on something in the left tool bar to get it back. Yikes...

PinkyMacGodess said:

Oh, not the contents of folders is disappearing too. I have to click on something in the left tool bar to get it back. Yikes...

what's happening? do you have docs & desktop on icloud, or on your mac? if folder contents are disappearing... try moving those folders to your docs folder (you can always put an alias for them on the desktop.

need more info, hard to gauge what's going on for you. also... have you rebooted?...

fisherking said:

what's happening? do you have docs & desktop on icloud, or on your mac? if folder contents are disappearing... try moving those folders to your docs folder (you can always put an alias for them on the desktop.

need more info, hard to gauge what's going on for you. also... have you rebooted?...

Just Documents folder, to my knowledge. I rebooted after the update. The folder that had the contents disappear/reappear isn't on iCloud either. Is this symptom related to iCloud for folders? Yikes...

I didn't have any problems with desktop folders (although I only have a few small ones).

PinkyMacGodess said:

Just Documents folder, to my knowledge. I rebooted after the update. The folder that had the contents disappear/reappear isn't on iCloud either. Is this symptom related to iCloud for folders? Yikes...

this is happening in your Documents folder? just want to be sure i understand...

& what's disappeared? a file, a dozen files...? reboot again. then see if things are still missing, or disappearing. again, hard to tell what's happening from here. maybe someone else has ideas...

meanwhile, can you restore missing items from your backup? do they then stay where you put them?

Clarification: The icons all disappear, but the actual files are still there. I was sitting yesterday moments before my post, reading something in the second monitor (external) and glanced over after seeing something out of 'the corner of my eye' and the entire desktop was empty, except for the three icons of the main and two external drives. 'Oh, interesting' I thought, and tried to get the icons back. Finder was open on the left side, so I tried moving it, and then closed it and reopened it, and they popped back. Then, while in a folder looking for a file, I took a second to check something on my desk, and looked up as all of the icons in that folder disappeared. I moved the window around, and opened a new Finder window, and they popped back. It's just a little unnerving that they are just winking out. I wonder if they wink out for more than just the icons (they are just aliases for the real files), meaning if they wink out, can macOS still see them too. An interesting twist/thought. And if they do disappear to macOS? It's unlikely, but so is the desktop/Finder being so unstable to have icons just randomly disappearing. Hmm...

something related to the monitoring setup..? anyway, if they're just aliases, you are not, at least, in danger of losing actual files...

try changing some of the desktop view options, see if that fixes anything...

fisherking said:

something related to the monitoring setup..? anyway, if they're just aliases, you are not, at least, in danger of losing actual files...

try changing some of the desktop view options, see if that fixes anything...

But I didn't change anything, except for the 13.3 update.

PinkyMacGodess said:

Everything disappears, except for local drives. Weird. I have to open Finder to have them pop back on the desktop.

Um, a 'feature'?

I can certainly relate to how perturbing this is. I experienced this a few months ago, I cannot remember exactly how long ago, and was greatly relieved when I clicked on the desktop and they all came back again. I have never experienced this since. This won't be any use for you other than for whatever reason this has happened to someone else before, totally unexpectedly and unexplained, and with me also not having done anything unusual or different to normal. All the best with getting through this.
edit: I think I might have actually done a restart for them to all come back - it was a while ago

eldho said:

I can certainly relate to how perturbing this is. I experienced this a few months ago, I cannot remember exactly how long ago, and was greatly relieved when I clicked on the desktop and they all came back again. I have never experienced this since. This won't be any use for you other than for whatever reason this has happened to someone else before, totally unexpectedly and unexplained, and with me also not having done anything unusual or different to normal. All the best with getting through this.
edit: I think I might have actually done a restart for them to all come back - it was a while ago

And I clicked Finder, as I remember, to get things back. Weird...

PinkyMacGodess said:

And I clicked Finder, as I remember, to get things back. Weird...

The happened to me again just now. All the icons on the desktop except for various drives disappeared, clicking on various things did nothing but a restart has things back to normal. This would have been more perturbing if it had not been for this recent exchange about this.

eldho said:

The happened to me again just now. All the icons on the desktop except for various drives disappeared, clicking on various things did nothing but a restart has things back to normal. This would have been more perturbing if it had not been for this recent exchange about this.

So peek-a-boo desktop seems to be a feature. Not sure why it's happening to this system. It's an IMP, lots of memory, lots of storage. It's not the first time it's happened. I'm glad it's not happening very often, but having it happen in a folder view was special. *shrug*

I'm having an alternate problem. Stuff is just randomly re-appearing on the desktop after I move it elsewhere. I save a file to the desktop. Edit it in some manner. Drag it to its eventual home. The file moves and then 10-15 seconds later the file re-appears on the desktop. I did a reboot earlier and it stopped for a couple of hours, but it's back now.

Anybody else see this? I updated to 13.3 last week and saw no issues like this after the update. Everything just started this morning after a reboot, which was done to try and get my screensaver working again (which did die post 13.3 update).

ugahairydawgs said:

I'm having an alternate problem. Stuff is just randomly re-appearing on the desktop after I move it elsewhere. I save a file to the desktop. Edit it in some manner. Drag it to its eventual home. The file moves and then 10-15 seconds later the file re-appears on the desktop. I did a reboot earlier and it stopped for a couple of hours, but it's back now.

Anybody else see this? I updated to 13.3 last week and saw no issues like this after the update. Everything just started this morning after a reboot, which was done to try and get my screensaver working again (which did die post 13.3 update).

I think I've seen that with a folder I have set to iCloud. It seems to stutter if there are some unknown (to me) network issues. I thought they were related to the great disappearing desktop, but it's not set for iCloud. I am so grateful that it's not destructive, yet. But iCloud tripping out like that seems to make me think I'd not want to use it?

I have issues with Mail, where messages I've deleted seem to hang in the folder for extended amounts of time. And if I try to delete them, the only option is undelete, and if I refresh the folder, they sometines disappear, but often don't go away until I shutdown Mail and restart it. *shrug* Maybe it IS iCloud doing this for everyone. (Nice feature)

PinkyMacGodess said:

I think I've seen that with a folder I have set to iCloud. It seems to stutter if there are some unknown (to me) network issues. I thought they were related to the great disappearing desktop, but it's not set for iCloud. I am so grateful that it's not destructive, yet. But iCloud tripping out like that seems to make me think I'd not want to use it?

I have issues with Mail, where messages I've deleted seem to hang in the folder for extended amounts of time. And if I try to delete them, the only option is undelete, and if I refresh the folder, they sometines disappear, but often don't go away until I shutdown Mail and restart it. *shrug* Maybe it IS iCloud doing this for everyone. (Nice feature)

Click to expand...

I don't use iCloud but after my last experience I noticed a prompt to start using iCloud so that obviously raises my suspicions there. I have had that prompt before so that may have been when it happened before.