Mac OS X applications downloaded from Internet stuck with "circle with diagonal line" icon

Question

After I've downloaded an application from the Internet and dragged it into my Applications folder it is shown with a "prohibited" crossed out circle icon. When I click on it the first time I get a popup dialog confirming that I want to run this program that was downloaded from the web.

That's all well and good, but even after I click OK the icon still is stuck like this until I log out and/or reboot the system. Is there any way to get it to display the application's real icon without rebooting?

Solution

Drag the app to your desktop first, and wait for it to finish loading from the .dmg file. It will get its proper icon. Then drag it to the Applications folder, or on the alias in the .dmg, if one is supplied.

Comments

[John Kugelman]

That did restart my dock but it didn't fix the icon.

[Kim Stacks]

Need to add that you do not need to drag the shortcut of the app on the desktop back. Just wait a while is enough. In case you do drag the shortcut back to Applications folder, you will now have 2 icons, one of which is the shortcut. Move the shortcut to Trash.

[JRobert]

I haven't seen that happen. When I do just as I described, I get one app in my Applications folder with it's proper icon showing. I could (but usually don't) drop it on the dock if I want a shortcut there. (I use 10.6; perhaps 10.7 behaves differently?)