I have a number of folders I like to keep down the left hand side of my Deskop for easy access. After the update, I discovered there is a rectangular area on the upper left of the screen (I’m using an M4 Mini with an Apple Studio Display) where folder icons cannot be placed. If an icon move to that area is attempted it is bounced back over to the right side of the screen.
The furthest left that icons can be positioned is about four inches from the left edge of the screen, which leaves them inconveniently behind open windows.
I’ve posted about this on Apple Discussions and also given feedback to Apple regarding the issue. Only one other person on Apple Discussions is having the issue, so it must be a sporadic bug. There is some speculation there that Stage Manager may somehow be involved and may be reserving this area for its use—but I don’t know if that’s the cause.
Things I’ve tried:
Using Command-J to pull up the Desktop preferences and experimenting with various Sort By, Icon Size, and Grid Spacing combinations.
In Settings / Desktop and Dock, making sure that Stage Manager is deactivated
Force-quitting the Finder
Restarting the computer
I’m now considering reinstalling Tahoe on the thin chance that may solve it, as this is a very irritating problem since I have years of muscle memory associated with certain folders being in certain places on the Desktop.
I’m curious whether anyone else is experiencing this? Any suggestions?
I usually keep that area empty; my active items are all on the right side of the screen.
However, I tested your case by creating a new folder and attempting to move it into the strip on the left side of my Mac Studio. The folder could not be moved into an area that was about the width of the Finder menu bar, and covered the whole screen above the top bar of the Dock.
I have no problem overlaying windows or widgets in that area.
I have no problems placing a folder anywhere at the left side of the screen, but I have widgets kept in the notification centre as they used to be in Sequoia. Maybe that screen area is reserved for widgets?
I don’t normally use widgets, but have a few I’d enabled in the past when I was experimenting with them and forgot they were there. After reading your post, I just now went into settings to twiddle with the widget settings to see if anything would make a difference. When I enabled Show Widgets On Desktop, the Widgets that came up filled precisely the space that is immune to icons!
Deleting those widgets gave me that area of the Desktop back. I don’t mind deleting them and I sure am glad to have things back to normal.
I’m supposing Apple did this because having widgets showing over the top of icons with the new Liquid Glass UI might be a problem.
Again, thank you so much!! Now I’m going to hop over to Apple Discussions and give this tip to the other guy who was about to pull his hair out over it.
