In a Finder window there should be an icon which looks like a Grid of squares with a number of options. Attached is a screen shot showing recent files with the most recent at the top and the Group icon circled. Once you find the screenshots the path bar will tell you where they are.
One more thing, did you do a Time Machine restore or did you manually copy things over? It’s playing on my mind that you have some other permission issues because it could be related.
It seems there is something wrong with permissions related to your Desktop. Do this command in a new terminal window. It will list the content of your User folder.
ls -le@
Scroll down to Desktop and see if you get the same as me. paalb is my username, you should see yours.
drwx------@ 25 paalb staff 800 Jan 24 16:49 Desktop
com.apple.macl 72
0: group:everyone deny delete
Here are the results:
David-Sagers-Mac-Pro:~ davidsager$ ls -le@
total 0
drwx------@ 11 davidsager staff 352 Apr 2 12:46 Desktop
com.apple.icloud.desktop 7
com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags 42
0: group:everyone inherited deny add_file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit
drwx------@ 2 davidsager staff 64 Apr 1 20:58 Documents
com.apple.icloud.desktop 7
com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags 42
0: group:everyone inherited deny add_file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit
drwxrwx–x+ 60 davidsager staff 1920 Apr 1 21:05 Library
0: group:everyone deny delete
David-Sagers-Mac-Pro:~ davidsager$
Recents is empty.
I did a Time Machine restore.
Yes, you have a permission problem. It is problematic giving you advice, because it might be more problems than you already have discovered. To be on the safe side, I would recommend you try resetting the permissions as shown in the screen dump here: https://eclecticlightdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/permissions01.jpg
Change permissions in the Finder “Get Info” window on your davidsager user folder to look like the screen dump, if that does not help, the advice from Apple is to re-installing macOS from Recovery mode. You will keep all your files so it is well worth the try.
If you are feeling reckless you can try resetting the acl’s on the Desktop first. This has helped me in the past, but I am not sure if works on Monterey and you are on your own if it makes things worse.
Remove all acl’s first and then set the right acl’s.
Remove acl
sudo chmod -R -N /Users/davidsager/Desktop
Add acl
sudo chmod +a "everyone deny delete" /Users/davidsager/Desktop
Thank you. I am running Big Sur, not Monterey.
However, It was the recovery process that got me into this mess.
Most of my apps are on a seperate volume named User. I have about 50 third-party apps on Macintosh HD.
I may just reinstall a fresh copy of Big Sur and then manually install these apps.
Thank you, and all the others, for your efforts on my behalf.
Recents is empty?? Even after you create a new screenshot? That is very odd as it means the Finder thinks you’ve never created a file.
Did you do the restore whilst you have the User volume mounted? What happens when you boot the machine without any other device attached? I’m not really sure what to suggest other than if you did a restore with other volumes attached it may have gotten very confused.
I did execute the recovery process. I reinstalled Big Sur and then used Recovery to reclaim files from Time Machine.
My Desktop is back. However, I have a few weird issues remaining.
I think we can conclude that restoring from Time Machine makes havoc with your permissions. I had hoped somebody that is used to Time Machine had chimed in, because I use Arq backup.
My original recommendation was to re-install macOS from Recovery mode, keeping your current files. Try that now, skipping Time Machine restore.
If that does not help, copy your work files to another disk. Erase your Macintosh HD from your Big Sur installation drive. Skip restore from Time Machine. Manually install all your applications and copy your files over from the other disk.
Not sure if this is helpful or possible. A while back my iMac (2014 27" Retina, Big Sur) just went nuts. I had seen a slow accumulation of odd problems over time but now the system refused to connect to the Internet.
After hours on the phone with Apple I decided to do a full factory reset and rebuild. I did not restore from Time Machine even though I run two of these in parallel. Instead I reformatted the hard drive, reinstalled Big Sur, and reinstalled all my apps from the web and my data from my backups (I keep full off-line copies in addition to Time Machine).
It was real work and took a couple of days but the results are excellent and none of the earlier problems recurred.
If you want to go down this route you need to make copies of all your data first and make a full list of all the options and setting you use. I filled many pages with notes about options and settings, you may be surprised!
