Quick tips are random posts regarding something I discovered on my way to something bigger. They usually get longer than “quick” would imply, for which I refuse to apologize.

I hadn’t seen it happen for a long time, but it struck me today. Blurry icons in Finder and Launchpad. Not all of them, just a few. Some App Store apps, some non, with no obvious rhyme or reason to what was affected.

I’ve actually never seen this happen in Launchpad before today, but back on Lion it happened once in a while in Finder and in the Application Switcher. A cache clear and a reboot sometimes took care of it, but not always.

If anyone knows what actually causes it, I’d love to hear about it. For now, here’s a quick, simple fix.

Located at the very end of a MacRumors forum thread, the trick is simple:

  1. Put Launchpad in your Dock (you took it out, right?) and make sure your Dock isn’t set to autohide
  2. Open Launchpad
  3. Find the apps with blurry icons and drag them to the Launchpad icon in your Dock

Boom. Crystal clear again. Here’s hoping that the occurrence is not a sign of larger issues…