We had them before, but suddenly in Mac OS X 10.5 they disappeared! However, whenever I want to grab something on the network, my intuitive reflex is to look for the network drive icon on the desktop! :'(

I had to dig around quite a while to find teh setting to bring them back. No it's not in the System Preferences... No it's not in the UI tweaks... it is in... the Finder Preferences!

  1. Click on the desktop
  2. In the Finder menu, click Preferences...
  3. Select the General tab
  4. Under "Show these items on the Desktop:", check "Connected servers"

Now you're back to normal.

Btw, you may also take the opportunity to reduce the clutter under "SHARED" in your Finder window sidebars:

  1. Same as above but select the Sidebar tab
  2. Uncheck "Bonjour Computers"

Comments from long ago:

Comment from: Radek Jurzysta

Oh man… Even though the post is 2 years old you saved me from gray hair :) Thanks a mil!

2011-08-30 13-20

Comment from: Leon

I upgraded from a Drobo 4bay to a Drobo FS which is a network shared device and even connects with iSCSI (network connection at 1000kbps)

i use this in a small office environment where my assistant also needs access to the same device.

i tried the above, but the icons don’t appear on my desktop - so far the only way is to open the local drive icon and selecting the DroboFS from the side bar.
(i’m running a new Macbook Pro with OSX Lion. )

2012-06-30 11-51

Comment from: Lizzie

Whoa! So irritating. Why do they have to mess with things that are already working. I don’t want to have to dig around to open my server. I want my icon on my desktop (just like before) easy! Fast!

It simply disappeared. Ugh!

Sometimes I wonder why they have made Mac, less user friendly with all this messing about!

Thank you.

2015-09-30 15-55

Comment from: Ondro

It’s 2018 and you saved my time, thank you! Also do not understand why anybody would do such stupidity and hide the icon. There are lots of people using network connections on the daily basis…

Thanks!

2018-01-26 10-18