3/28/11
10:20 am

MacMost Now 533: Restoring Lost Dock and Finder Items

A common problem for new Mac users is to find an application missing from the Dock. Or, to find that it only appears when the application is running. Items can also go missing from the Finder sidebar or the desktop. This video explains why these can disappear and how to get them back.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode, let's look at restoring lost dock and finder items. So, this is a pretty common question I get. Sometimes somebody notices something is missing from the dock or doesn't appear in the finder. They've changed a setting and they don't quite know how to get back to how it was before. Let's look at some of the most common occurrences of this and how to fix them. 
So, a common problem people have is something's missing out of the dock. So, say here you've got Safari, say it's gone. One way that could happen by accident is simply by dragging away and you can see it gets rid of it out of the dock. So, how do you get Safari back? Well, the important thing to remember is these are just shortcuts, aliases to the actual item. Safari isn't gone. Just your shortcut in the dock is missing. So, in the finder if you go to the applications folder, that's where your applications really live. And you get something back in the dock by simply finding it in your applications folder, there's Safari, and dragging it back into the dock. And you can put it anywhere you want in here. Put it right back where it was and you can see Safari's been restored. 
Now, in addition sometimes people will say, "Well, Safari's there, but it's on the right side of the dock" as it'll appear. You can see it there right now. So, when I quit it, it goes away. How do I get it to stay in the dock? Well, it's the same problem. You see when an application isn't in the dock in the first place, and you run it, it will appear on the right side of the dock temporarily. And then will go away when you're no longer running it. So, to get it over here you can follow the steps I showed you before. Or while it's running and on the right side of the dock, you can simply drag it from the right side to the left side. And that will mean that it's there permanently. I quit Safari. You can see it remains there in the dock.
Now, on the right side of the dock, you've got some standard items like the applications folder, documents folder and downloads folder. Now, what if one of these is missing. It can go away just as easily. Just drag it out, now your downloads folder is missing. Well, it's still there. That's just the shortcut to it. If I go in the finder, I can see that if I look under my user folder, my user's name is MacMost here. I can see there the actual downloads folder. That's just a shortcut. And I can restore it there by dragging this folder, over just to where it was and dropping it in. And now my downloads folder is there again.
I can do the same thing with documents, which is right here. Or I can do the same thing with applications, which is this applications folder here. I go to the top level of my Mac hard drive and I could see it there with the applications folder, and I can drag that back into the dock as well. 
Another common thing like this is sometimes you can see hard drives like your main Macintosh hard drive on the desktop here. And you can see I've got some others here below, but many of you might just have one hard drive. 
And then suddenly they're not there anymore. The way they appear or disappear is if you go to finder preferences here, and under the general tab for preferences you can see "show these items on the desktop". And if you turn off hard disks you can see they don't appear there anymore, which is a common way to operate. But if you want to get them back, just turn on hard disk again and they'll reappear. Also, external drives as well can be here and also CDs, DVDs, anything you insert into the optical drive and iPods. You can have the option to have them appear on the desktop or not.
Another thing that sometimes goes missing are items, if you create a new finder window and you look at the items on the left side of the sidebar there. So, you can get those back by going to the same place "finder preferences", but under "sidebar" instead of general. Now you can see a lot of different check boxes here. So, if I were to say, "remove hard disks" — so you can see they disappear from devices. I can add in my entire computer there under devices. If you get rid of everything in a category, like all the shared stuff, you can see shared disappeared from here.
Another thing that sometimes goes missing are these little menu items here at the top. So, for instance, say your volume control is missing. I get this asked a lot. You go to system preferences. Each one of these has a item in system preferences that corresponds to it. So, for instance, if I go to sound in system preferences and I go here, I can look at the bottom and I can notice that there are "show volume" in the menu bar. So, if that was turned off, you can see it's missing and I can turn it back on again. And you can find one for just about everything here. So, for instance, under displays if I go into there we will see that there's a "show displays" and menu bar here.
So, those are some of the most common occurrences of things in the finder. Or the dock suddenly disappearing or changing, and how to get them back to the way they were before. Till next time, this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 39 Responses to “MacMost Now 533: Restoring Lost Dock and Finder Items”

Ronnie

13 years ago

Yay! Thanks, this was super helpful and easy to follow!

Kevin

13 years ago

Deleted safari icon that was on desktop, emptied trash, safari logo missing from finder. Clicked on Mac OS X software, got safari logo back in dock, but icon does not show up in finder under applications as it should. How do I get it back.

Comments: 39 Responses to “MacMost Now 533: Restoring Lost Dock and Finder Items”

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