Folder has wrong kind and icon in Finder

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cht1995 Author

Level 1

7 points

Folder has wrong kind and icon in Finder

Since earlier this year, I've been seeing some folders on my exFAT external drive to show wrong "Kind" and icon. When I right click on a folder to Get Info, it shows the folder as a JPEG image or MP4 video.

There seems to be no way to reset the folder's kind back to Folder.

A similar discussion I found online on MacRumors: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/random-folders-have-wrong-icon-in-finder.2455228/

This seems to be a macOS 15 problem. I haven't upgraded to macOS 26 yet.

Let me know if more information is needed. This is super annoying as it randomly happens on various folders. As seen in the attached screenshot, it even happens on the root folder of my external drive!

[Edited by Moderator]

Mac Studio, macOS 15.7

Posted on Oct 18, 2025 8:49 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 23, 2025 8:48 AM in response to cht1995

Still happens all the time in macOS 26, for both folders and files. And it's not just exFAT drives, I see it on network drives from my NAS, even on APFS-formatted external drives. It's some sort of bug in Finder. I think it caches the file information so it can display it quickly without looking it up, but whatever it's using as a cache index isn't unique enough, so it will sometimes display the information for a different file/folder. Get Info will show the wrong size/kind as well, but the size on disk and other attributes will be correct. No way I've found yet to refresh it.

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Answer 2

Nov 17, 2025 12:01 AM in response to cht1995

Hello everyone,

after experiencing this issue more often this year I started looking and found out I am not the only one. I thought I was stupidly moving icons on folder to modify them...

I mostly observe this issue on our NAS via smb and even more funny is, that in our company with multiple macs one shows the wrong kind and the other displays it corrently. All while running exact the same OS version. I see this issue since somewhere in spring and also on 26.1 Tahoe. I also once had it on my mac desktop (which is stored in the iCloud) so this seems to be a finder display specific issue not a filesystem error. But really annoying. Especially if using as NAS with a lot of data and then the folder gets sorted wrong cause finder thinks it of type "JPEG".

Will leave feedback at the apple feedback page. This is something that is not allowed to exist. Especially this long.

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Answer 3

cht1995 Author

Level 1

7 points

Oct 18, 2025 11:18 PM in response to dialabrain

Indeed. However, this problem shouldn't be related to file system imo.

The external drive in the screenshot is on NTFS, not even writable on macOS by default. Why its Kind shows as a JPEG image is beyond my knowledge. Has to be some system metadata rather than metadata from the disk.

Also, this problem is not consistent. Eject and re-mount the disk and the disk icon returns to normal.

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