Removing broken links from sidebar in Lion
Monday, July 25th, 2011 - 7:54 pm - Apple
A very small post for people searching about this specific issue:
You’re trying to delete an icon/shortcut from the sidebar in Finder, under Mac OS X Lion/10.7.
Right clicking doesn’t work, because that folder does not exist, or maybe it points to a share using an old version of AFP or SMB that you can’t connect to, because some company that almost has the same name as a famous dog if you pronounce it in french is a bad company that doesn’t update the firmware on any hardware old enough to have a lot of important data on it.
What you need to do is hold command and drag it to Trash instead of doing a right click.
Thanks! In my case the original folder still exists and I was able to create a new link to it in the Finder Sidebar, but the old link had simply stopped working. Normally one could simply drag a link from the Sidebar or use the context menu (right-click) and “remove from sidebar”, but for the bad link those methods did not work. Your suggestion of Cmd (or Apple) and drag it out worked!
This was in Snow Leopard, so it is not only relevant to Lion. Actually it was not necessary to drag it all the way to the Trash.
Actually, it has been a while since I deleted something from the Sidebar! Simply dragging didn’t work with other links, unlike dragging something from the Dock. Command + drag was necessary with a normal link too, although right-clicking was an alternative.
Thanks a lot for posting this. I thought that dead link was going to be stuck there forever.
And how in the world did you figure that out?
Thanks!
I tried basically every combination of right clicking, option, command, dragging.. I could not believe there was no way to do it !
Thanks for the info. I found it useful.
dude, you totally rock. that’s been driving me nuts for weeks and could not find the correct solution.
You sir, is a genius and a hero. You’ve just saved me from going bald. And how sweet it is to search for “removing broken links from finder sidebar lion” and landing on a page with that exact title and getting my answer to the point. Thank you.
In my case, the solution didn’t work — though it did inspire me to try something that did!
My broken link was to a DropBox folder. Dragging the link to the trash didn’t remove the link – and like everyone else here, right clicking proved fruitless too.
So I recreated the folder in DropBox and presto! The previously “broken” link was deletable
Thanks for the clue!
Crick
Update: I found the same problem on my Mac Pro after upgrading to Lion.. this time I tried dragging the broken link from the sidebar while holding down the Command key. When I did this, there appeared a little cloud with my cursor as I dragged the link to the trash… and voila! Poof it went away
So I too am having this issue but I have another odd issue that is stopping me from trying this method. Since installing Lion I have not figured out a way to view my trash can anymore. Seems like an easy one to solve and it probably is but googling this issue I have not been able to find an answer.
Can anyone here help? In Finder the only place I see mention of trash can is under the Finder/File menu.
Aha! Just found another way that works. Hold Cmd+Option and drag the link off the sidebar. Wonderful.
I still am wondering how to make my trash can visible again though.
this worked great!
[...] Removing broken links from sidebar in Lion | binaryfactory.ca [...]
Thanks
Worked a treat!
Thank you, thank you for publishing this tip. I was going crazy trying to figure out how – nowhere could I find this in Apple’s own system help.
Thanks a lot!
thank you! been wondering how to do that and this helped!!