I use a MacBook with an external monitor and keep the MacBook’s lid closed. When I want to go somewhere, I disconnect the MacBook from the display and stick it in my bag. But when I open the lid, the MacBook wakes up, and most of the time the icons that were on my Desktop are gone. The menubar and Dock are still around, just no icons. How do I bring them back? I’ve been restarting the MacBook every time, but that takes a while and isn’t so convenient.

This same thing happens to us all the time, and you’ll be glad to hear we found a solution that doesn’t require a restart. Just relaunch the Finder. To do that, press Command-Option-Escape, which is the keyboard shortcut to bring up the Force Quit Applications window. That window will show all your currently running applications, and you can highlight one in the list and click the Force Quit button to shut it down--you’d do this if one of your applications had frozen and you want to, just like the name says, force it to quit.

Relaunch the Finder to make it find your missing icons.

But you can’t really “quit” the Finder, and sure enough, when you select it in the list of applications, the Force Quit button will change to say Relaunch. Click that button, and you’ll see a dialog asking you if you really want to force the Finder to quit because you’ll lose any unsaved changes. (Which reminds us: Don’t do this while the Finder is busy transferring a file, but otherwise, you’ll be okay.) Click the Relaunch button again, and after a few seconds, your Desktop will be redrawn, which will bring your icons back.

They might be strewn around your Desktop a bit because your MacBook’s display resolution doesn’t match your external monitor’s resolution, which means the icons’ locations are different between the two. If you like keeping your Desktop neat with the Snap To Grid alignment in the Finder’s View Options menu (Command-J), then just select the Desktop and choose View > Clean Up to send your icons back to their places on the invisible grid. There, that’s better.