Desktop is Broken? Icons/Folders gone.. can't right click.. can't drop anything onto it

Try deleting Finder preferences. Recently I've seen a number of cases of weird Finder behavior, and several have been fixed by doing this.

In Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

Drag the file out of the folder (to the trash or somewhere else; no need to delete it just yet).

Force relaunch the Finder (Command-Option-escape, select Finder, click Relaunch), or logout and back in.

Any changes?

Hello I was facing the same issue and here is the solution.

click on Apple Icon on the top left corner > System Settings.

From the left pane click on Desktop & Dock option and then in the right pane diable the option Stage Manager.

Actually it is a new feature of the Vetura macOS.

Do like if you find it useful.

Hi sz2273,

Thank you for using the Apple Support Communities! If your Desktop appears to be disabled, we recommend that you reach out to Apple Support directly to take a further look. Please reach out here:

Get Support

Hope this helps!

Have a great day.

It seems that you may have set Documents and Desktop in iCloud.

In your shot, it looks like it is taking a while to load the contents of your iCloud Drive.

If all the stuff from Desktop is in iCloud, and you are having network issues, that could explain it.

In my case there was a symbolic link from Desktop to Desktop … an infinite loop. The files and folders in Desktop are gone, on my iCloud and locally (it also created

a local desktop directory). The lost files are also not in the Trash.

I also have a lot of problems with my desktop. All files are gone and I can't access it.