Why aren’t my overlay status icons working?
The Sync desktop application displays status icons on your files and to let you know whether they are synced. If you do not see Sync status icon overlays on your files in your Sync folder, follow these steps to troubleshoot.
In this article:
Resolving missing icon overlays on macOS
1. Confirm that the Sync desktop app is running. Status icons will not be present if the desktop has shut down unexpectedly. To check if Sync is running, look for the Sync icon on your Mac menu bar.
2. Confirm that the Sync Finder extension is enabled, under Mac Settings as follows:
- Click the Apple icon in the Menu Bar (top left corner of the screen)
- Select System Preferences
- Select Extensions
- Ensure the Sync Finder Extension is checked
- If you are also running Dropbox, quit Dropbox, or uncheck the Dropbox Finder Extension
- Restart your computer
For Ventura OS and higher:
Confirm that the Sync Finder extension is enabled, under Mac Settings as follows:
- Click the Apple icon in the Menu Bar (top left corner of the screen)
- Select System Settings > Privacy & Security
- Scroll to the bottom of the menu and select Extensions
- Select Added extensions
- Uncheck and re-check the Finder extensions box below Sync
Resolving missing icon overlays on Windows
1. Confirm that the Sync desktop app is running. Status icons will not be present if the desktop has shut down unexpectedly. To check if Sync is running, look for the Sync icon on your Windows System Tray.
2. On Windows, there is a maximum number of icon overlays available to third-party applications, which means if you have multiple applications that feature icon overlays, some may take precedence over others. To ensure the Sync app gets icon overlay precedence:
- Go to the Run command through your Start Menu
- Type in regedit and click OK
- Click Yes
- There will be a folder structure on the left column of the regedit utility. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers
- If the Sync overlays (AAASync…) do not appear in the top 11 of the list they will not be displayed. You can rename the overlays to move them up the list as they are sorted alphabetically with spaces listed first.
- Right-click on the AAASync… entry
- Select Rename
-
- Enter 3 spaces before the AAA and click enter
- Do this for the next 3 Sync overlays
- Restart your computer to apply settings
- When going back, it should look like this.
