How to fix macOS Finder sidebar missing items or not showing recent files, tags, or favourites

Summary

This guide helps you troubleshoot and resolve: How to fix macOS Finder sidebar missing items or not showing recent files, tags, or favourites. Follow the steps below to fix the issue.

Common Causes

The macOS Finder sidebar is one of the quickest ways to navigate to your favourite folders, connected drives, tags, and recently used files. When items disappear or fail to update, it can slow down your workflow considerably. This guide walks you through restoring missing sidebar items, recent files, tags, and favourites on macOS Ventura and later.

Quick Fix Steps

If your Finder sidebar is missing items or not displaying recent files, tags, or favourites, try these steps in order before diving into the detailed instructions below:

1. Open Finder and select Finder > Settings (or Finder > Preferences on older macOS versions) from the menu bar.
2. Click the Sidebar tab and tick the boxes for any items that are missing, such as Recent, Tags, Favourites, and connected locations.
3. Quit and reopen Finder by holding option and right-clicking the Finder icon in the Dock, then selecting Relaunch.
4. If the issue persists, sign out of your macOS user account and sign back in.

Detailed Instructions

Customising the Sidebar

The Finder sidebar is fully customisable, and it's easy to accidentally hide items by dragging them out or unchecking them in Settings.

1. Open Finder from the Dock.
2. Click Finder in the menu bar, then choose Settings.
3. Select the Sidebar tab.
4. Tick the boxes next to each item you want visible, including:
   • Recents
   • Applications
   • Desktop
   • Documents
   • Downloads
   • Home
   • AirDrop
   • iCloud Drive
   • Tags
   • Any connected external drives or network locations
5. Close the Settings window. Your sidebar will update immediately.

Restoring Recent Files in the Sidebar

If the Recents item is visible but no files are appearing underneath it, macOS may have stopped tracking recent files, or your privacy settings may be blocking it.

1. Click the Apple menu and choose System Settings.
2. Select Desktop & Dock from the sidebar.
3. Scroll down and click Recent Documents, Applications, and Servers (or Recent Items on older versions).
4. Ensure the toggle is set to show recent items and adjust the number displayed if needed.
5. Open Finder > Settings and confirm Recents is ticked under the Sidebar tab.
6. Quit and reopen Finder to refresh the list.

Restoring Tags in the Sidebar

Tags allow you to colour-code and label files for quick filtering. If they have disappeared from your sidebar, follow these steps:

1. Open Finder > Settings and click the Sidebar tab.
2. Tick the box next to Tags.
3. Expand the Tags section in the sidebar and tick the individual tags you want to appear.
4. If a tag is missing entirely, right-click any file, choose Tags, and select or create the tag you need.

Restoring Favourites

The Favourites section sits at the top of the sidebar and includes items like AirDrop, Applications, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and Home. If any of these are missing:

1. Open Finder > Settings and click the Sidebar tab.
2. Under Favourites, tick each item you want restored.
3. To add a custom folder, navigate to it in Finder, then drag it directly into the Favourites area of the sidebar.
4. To remove an item you no longer want, right-click it in the sidebar and select Remove from Sidebar.

Restoring Missing Drives and Locations

External drives, network shares, and connected servers can disappear from the sidebar if they are ejected, disconnected, or hidden in Settings.

1. Reconnect any external drives or remount network shares by selecting Go > Connect to Server (cmd + K) in Finder.
2. Open Finder > Settings > Sidebar and confirm the drive or location is ticked under Locations.
3. If the drive still does not appear, open System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions and ensure no third-party file system extensions are blocking the mount.

Troubleshooting

Reset the Finder Preferences

Corrupted preference files can cause the sidebar to behave unpredictably. Resetting them often resolves stubborn issues.

1. Quit Finder completely using option + right-click on the Finder Dock icon, then choose Relaunch.
2. Open Terminal from Applications > Utilities.
3. Type the following command and press Return:
   • rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
4. Type killall Finder and press Return to relaunch Finder.
5. Reopen Finder > Settings > Sidebar and reconfigure your sidebar items.

Restart the Finder Process

If Finder becomes unresponsive or the sidebar stops updating, restarting the process can refresh everything.

1. Hold option and right-click the Finder icon in the Dock.
2. Select Relaunch.
3. Wait for Finder to reopen and check whether the sidebar items have returned.

Check macOS User Account Integrity

If the sidebar is missing items only for a specific user account, the user profile may be partially corrupted.

1. Sign out of your current account via the Apple menu > Sign Out.
2. Sign in to a different user account if one is available, and check whether the sidebar works correctly there.
3. If the sidebar works in another account, the issue is isolated to your user profile. Consider creating a new user account in System Settings > Users & Groups and migrating your data across.

Run First Aid on the Startup Disk

File system errors can occasionally prevent Finder from reading sidebar preference files correctly.

1. Restart your Mac and hold cmd + R during boot to enter macOS Recovery.
2. Select Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities window.
3. Choose your startup disk from the sidebar.
4. Click First Aid, then Run.
5. When the process completes, restart your Mac normally.

Still Having Issues?