OS X Finder Sidebar Favourites Missing or Permission Issue

[Carter]

Full Blog post @ OS X Finder Sidebar Favourites Missing or Permission Issue

I’ve been dealing with this issue for a good while now and there are countless articles online that talk about this but there hasn’t been a solid fix yet. In most cases users are playing with the Finder and Sidebar preferences but without luck. This is one of the only steps that seems to gets messed up with permissions errors or bad links when you use a default profile script. Everything else seems to work but starting with OS X 10.10 this has been broken.

 

Today with a suggestion from @harryn over at EduGeet.net http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/72443-how-create-os-x-default-profile-template-bind-ad-10-5-10-8-a-3.html#post1432366 I simply removed/deleted the user I use to build the profile then had a new user log into the computer and there it was, all the Sidebar Shortcuts with proper links and permissions. This now means I can customize the sidebar with the users Desktop, Download, Documents folders etc. and they will properly work when a user selects a location.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Dos_Box

[Mustang]

Too be honest i wouldn't call this an issue, modifying the default profile is totally unsupported by Apple and always has been as far as i am aware.

I doubt there will be a fix because in there eyes there isn't an issue.

 

I believe you can modify the sidebar with python or objectiveC

[Carter]

I agree and disagree. Apple knows that large institutions use a default profile and the finder sidebar has worked since OS X was released. This is a bump in the road that has a big impact on the user experience. I'm not saying it's a bug but it's certainly a pain to all those that use a standard profile for deployment. Since the release of Yosemite 10.10 this has been an issue that many have been trying to get around. Yes there are Python scripts but so far nothing seems to be cut and dry simple.

 

Either-way, for now this is a quick solution to fix the Finder Sidebar for all of us that use default profiles for deployment purposes.

[Mustang]

Just out of interest what kind of things are you adding to your default profile?

[slancaster]

I would really like control over our sidebar for our network users. The default view doesnt even show their home drive so makes it a pain within certain apps when it comes to saving.

 

Uploading a custom plist to Profile Manager doesnt work and ive tried countless variations of this.

Anyone got a solution to customising sidebars?!

[Arthur]

Anyone got a solution to customising sidebars?!

 

https://github.com/matt4836/changeSidebarLists/blob/master/Change_Sidebar_List.py

 

From: www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/176286-i-love-apple-imacs-not.html#post1511382

[slancaster]

Thank you, I shall have a look. Crazy that Apple dont allow easy access to this and people have gone as far as creating Python scripts to achieve what they want.