Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch
iPhone icons all over the place in version 3.0
But not the right place, and that's the problem. Apple support boards are seeing increasing message traffic about icons that vanish, or attach themselves to the wrong app. This seems a problem with iPhone 3.0. Older versions seem unaffected.I saw this myself yesterday. My AT&T Navigator app which I am testing for a forthcoming review, somehow acquired my Reuters News icon.
I deleted the AT&T app and re-downloaded it, but that didn't help. I reset the phone and that didn't help either. Finally I did a sync with all the apps turned off in the iPhone apps tab, then did another sync with my apps on. That restored the proper icon, but some of my apps acted like they had been downloaded for the first time and I had to set them up again.
This is clearly a real bug that Apple will have to address. There are some other solutions floating around on the Apple message boards, such as deleting the app, downloading it again, and restarting the phone. If you have the problem, I'd suggest you try the easiest solutions first.
Some other users are seeing icons turn white, while other app icons simply disappear. One developer said this was a common issue before the final release of the 3.0 software, and he was surprised to see it now.
Let us know if you've got this affliction and what you did to fix it, and be sure to let Apple know.
Thanks to Steve for the tip.
Gallery: Mixed up icons on iPhone OS 3.0
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Jinto said 4:04PM on 6-26-2009
I wonder how Winterboard would be affected by this?
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Ryan said 4:17PM on 6-26-2009
Winterboard seems to be affected by this bug. Half of the icon was the old icon and half was the changed icon. Only happened once though.
jonathan said 6:19PM on 6-27-2009
i had the same issue happen when i originally jailbroke 3.0 it gave cydia and icy icons for apps i had already deleted as well as dropped the opacity on the icons to less than 50...very greyed out.
however after installing winterboard and a theme, it replaced with the right icons for that theme, so i no longer care lol.
no missing apps tho.
Paddy said 4:53PM on 6-26-2009
I only have this problem on my JB iPhone and iPhone3G, and my iPhone works fine so far.
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darkpaw said 4:12PM on 6-26-2009
I reported this to Apple weeks before 3.0 was released. It hasn't happened on my iPhone 3G since I got the GM seed, but it was very prevalent on previous builds.
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Amber said 11:03PM on 6-26-2009
+1 for me. I had icon problems all the time on the Beta builds, but haven't seen it since.
Benoit Cerrina said 12:41AM on 6-27-2009
same here. Beta 5 was terrible with this, I also had apps with no icons.
I haven't seen the problem since switching to the GM_seed
Ryan said 2:30AM on 6-28-2009
Same for me, in beta 5 is was horrible. I didnt have mixed up icons, instead I would have whole pages of blank icons, with only the name showing :/. GM seed fixed this for me though..
ack154 said 4:12PM on 6-26-2009
Does it seem to be tied to a specific device? Or anything running 3.0? I haven't seen anything on my 3GS like this (yet).
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Victor Agreda Jr said 5:21PM on 6-26-2009
The pics in the gallery are from my 3GS, and it happened after WunderRadio crashed the iPhone entirely (not just Springboard). A full wipe/restore was the only thing that fixed it.
kmcgrady90 said 4:35AM on 6-27-2009
This bug occurred during the beta testing. I'm pretty sure it happens on all devices as it happens on my 2g touch. During the testing the bug was much worse with nearly every newly installed app acquiring the wrong icon or none at all! Then the solution was just to turn the device off and then on again and everything seemed to fix itself.
(01) said 10:37AM on 6-27-2009
I wonder (though doubtful) if this is an indication that Apple will allow user-created custom themes on the phone. I know, I know, I can jailbreak, but I'm just not inclined to.
jds17j said 4:17PM on 6-26-2009
I've had it happen at least twice on my iPhone 3g since updating to 3.0...
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Nick said 4:18PM on 6-26-2009
Syncing like that will always delete the app data from your device. If you want to keep app settings, you need to do a "Restore from Backup" in iTunes.
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Hawkman said 5:32PM on 6-26-2009
Yeah, this could do with some emphasis. "...but some of my apps acted like they had been downloaded for the first time..." doesn't really convey the severity of _losing all your data for any app which you choose to stop syncing_.
I had this problem when I first set up my original iPhone with 3.0. The only thing that cured it for me was a full software restore, followed by restoring from my backup – just "Restore from backup" didn't seem to help.
Chris said 4:21PM on 6-26-2009
I have experienced this as well on my 3Gs. Beejive was showing the AOL IM app icon (which isn't even installed on my device) and Strategery was showing the icon of Scribble Lite. I deleted the apps and reinstalled and that seemed to fix the issue. Hasn't been an issue again for me, thankfully.
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craig said 4:27PM on 6-26-2009
i had someone log in on facebook and 49 new messages pop up on the app icon but they wouldnt go away even after marking them all read and logging out i had to delete the app reset and reinstall to get them to go away
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Evilhomer said 4:25PM on 6-26-2009
I had this happen to me as well and it was after downloading the AT&T Nav app. It was picking up other program icons and apps downloaded after the AT&T Nav install would have the wrong icon as well.
I actually did a full restore yesterday and it solved the problem. I did reinstall from a back up so I didn't have to re-setup logins for those apps that require it.
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EBone said 4:30PM on 6-26-2009
Having this issue with a couple of different apps since updating my 3G to 3.0.
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macuser said 4:31PM on 6-26-2009
My Shazam app & Google Mobile app like to disappear sometimes, but I just have to re-sync them back on. This happened before though on the previous version. So far no problems here.
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