Finder not refreshing desktop in background

I have the problem that if I create, remove, or rename files on the desktop with a program other than Finder, it will not show up there before I switch focus to Finder. Very annoying obviously.

I have found from googling that this is an issue that pops up now and then, but none of the answers I have found are either irrelevant or about how to restart Finder, which also helps as one might expect, but only temporarily.

Any suggestions?

bkhl said:

I have the problem that if I create, remove, or rename files on the desktop with a program other than Finder, it will not show up there before I switch focus to Finder. Very annoying obviously.

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Perhaps, but also very logical. Switching focus to Finder is when you're telling it to "refresh". You want another app to tell Finder that. That's probably not gonna happen.

toMACsh said:

Perhaps, but also very logical. Switching focus to Finder is when you're telling it to "refresh". You want another app to tell Finder that. That's probably not gonna happen.

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Actually that's exactly what usually happens, as you will have noticed if you ever saved a file from any program to the desktop. As you probably don't have this problem yourself you can try it with a command like "touch ~/Desktop/test" in Terminal.app.

Presumably Finder monitors the file system for changes, but in my case it is for some reason failing.

bkhl said:

Actually that's exactly what usually happens, as you will have noticed if you ever saved a file from any program to the desktop. As you probably don't have this problem yourself you can try it with a command like "touch ~/Desktop/test" in Terminal.app.

Presumably Finder monitors the file system for changes, but in my case it is for some reason failing.

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Try creating a new user, log in to that account, and see if the problem persists there. This will help narrow down where the problem lays.