Drive Icons Missing From Your Mac’s Desktop?

Screen shot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc.

Question: Drive Icons Missing From Your Mac’s Desktop?

My Mac doesn’t display any drive icons on the desktop. I know it’s supposed to, because I’ve seen hard drive icons displayed on my friend’s Mac or at the Apple Store, where I bought my Mac.

How do I get my Mac to display the hard drive icons?

Answer:

It's the Finder's job to display the desktop and all of its icons, including those for hard drives. The problem is that a default install of OS X renders the desktop without the drive icons.

Luckily, this is easy to correct. In fact, you can specify which desktop icons you would like to have visible simply by setting the preferences in the Finder.

Setting Which Desktop Icons Display

1. Click on the desktop or open a Finder window, to ensure the Finder is currently the front most application.


2. From the menu bar, select Finder, Preferences.


3. In the Finder Preferences window that opens, click the General tab.


4. Place a check mark next to the items you wish to display on the desktop. The options include Hard disks, External disks, CDs, DVDs, iPods, and Connected Servers.


5. Close the Finder Preferences window.

The selected items will now display on the Desktop.