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Blurry icons in Launchpad

Prime85

Prime85

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 1, 2012
652
0
Does anyone notice that the icons in lauchpad are a little more blurry then they were in Lion?

I have the MBP with the 1680 X 1050 Resolution. I am thinking that maybe they haven't updated it for the higher Res yet?

If anyone else that has ML and has the MBP with the high resolution screen let me know if you see the same issue.
 
Just installed Mountain Lion myself on my 2010 MacBook Pro 15". It also has the high-res upgrade (probably just coincidence) and my icons are blurry too :(

This was from a completely clean install (just put an SSD in) so I guess must be the assets. Kinda bugging me!
 
I have hi-res and blurry icons as well. That was the first introduction to Mountain Lion. After install and reboot I went into Launchpad and said Yuck! Glad I'm not the only one. I think they scaled them up a bit and that is causing the blurry look.
 
Ugh, Apple needs to fix this ASAP. I've already submitted this issue to them.

The funny thing is, this was also an issue when Lion was first released (the LaunchPad icons were too small and looked fuzzy).

After the first (or second) update, Apple fixed the issue, and bumped the icon size up. Everything looked crisp and icons in folder groups were also larger (and easy to discern).
 
Yah same issue here. Overall things seem a little more blurry then 10.7... who knows. Maybe there's something weird going on now with all the Retina UI stuff scaling.

OR they might be doing it on purpose thinking no one will notice so when you are at an Apple store they can demo how much BETTER retina is when really... it's not that big a difference unless your face is pressed against the glass.
 
Last edited:
Same thing here. At first I thought it was a deliberate action to make launchpad transitions faster, but it doesn't make much sense.
 
I've also noticed that application icons look dull and washed out in general, especially on the dock. Is this a bug? System wide issues with icons in ML? I don't think that this is by design. Why would Apple want icons to look dull?
 
A stupid solution

I solved this issue for me, but I think they still need to fix it, it is not the perfect solution. I used Launchpad-control v1.63, and I sort all and all the icons look ok now, but the icons got shuffled, so I'm spending my time reordering them.
 
alnashif said:
I solved this issue for me, but I think they still need to fix it, it is not the perfect solution. I used Launchpad-control v1.63, and I sort all and all the icons look ok now, but the icons got shuffled, so I'm spending my time reordering them.
Click to expand...

Tried that. nada. You can really see the blurry poop in the folder icon icons.
 
Another Solution

Stop the application, move it to desktop and then bring it back to the /Application folder. This work for sure
 
Icy1007 said:
Hmmm, all of my icons look good in Launchpad. :confused:
Click to expand...

I'm with you, I thought mine looked a little crisper if anything. Maybe I'm just comparing my June 2012 15" with hi-res to an early 2011 13" and seeing a difference.
 
i thought mine were slightly blurry but i thought i was just analysing too much.

but then i realized that apple have increased the size of the icons in launchpad, theres now 7 icons per row rather than the previous 8 per row in lion.

late 2011 15inch base model mbp.
 
If anyone stumbles across this in the future, here's a fix that worked for me.

First, remove the offending blurry icon from Launchpad. This is quickly done through terminal:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db "DELETE from apps WHERE title='APPNAME';" && killall Dock
Click to expand...

Where APPNAME = the blurry icon (e.g. iTunes)


Then, add the icon back into Launchpad by dragging the app from finder into the Launchpad icon on your dock. If you don't have Launchpad on your dock, put it there, drag the icon to be added on, then remove Launchpad.


Hopefully this fixes the problem for you, as it did for me!

I've also attached a screenshot of the bug being discussed here, as some people seem confused as to what a random blurry icon constitutes.
 

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Worked great, but is terminal command even necessary?

Thanks Feed Me.

I skipped running the terminal command after fixing first two icons. Just dragging the blurry icon from launchpad window onto launchpad icon in dock made them nice and sharp. I think other icons that weren't so obviously blurry are sharper now too!

Feed Me said:
If anyone stumbles across this in the future, here's a fix that worked for me.

First, remove the offending blurry icon from Launchpad. This is quickly done through terminal:



Where APPNAME = the blurry icon (e.g. iTunes)


Then, add the icon back into Launchpad by dragging the app from finder into the Launchpad icon on your dock. If you don't have Launchpad on your dock, put it there, drag the icon to be added on, then remove Launchpad.


Hopefully this fixes the problem for you, as it did for me!

I've also attached a screenshot of the bug being discussed here, as some people seem confused as to what a random blurry icon constitutes.
Click to expand...
 
sorry to dig up an old thread, but this is the exact issue I have been looking into as well... Been driving crazy...

1024 looks much sharper on my 11'' MBA as well...
 
Feed Me said:
I'm not sure what you mean
Perhaps a screenshot of the problem?
Click to expand...

The low-quality pixelated icons show not only with application icons, but also with folder icons on the Desktop. Yet, the tip provided above does not work with such folder icons. Is there a way to fix them so that they show in high-quality and non-pixelated? Thanks.
 
Is it possible to fix the pixelated icons on the Desktop files and folders, dmg disk image content items, etc?
 
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