Why can I sometimes not drag icons to a supposedly empty spot on my Mac OS X desktop?

Question

I'm using align to grid. There's an icon. There's an empty space. I drag from icon to empty space. It bounces back to its original spot as though there were an icon in the empty space. But there's not! WHY?? Thanks. (Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6)

Solution 1

Thanks to Theo Belk--I tried changing the text size and each time the text size was changed encountered some form of the drag issue. What I think is happening is that when the size is changed, the icons that are already in some place on the desktop sometimes stay there, instead of being moved to their new correct grid locations. Therefore what appears to be an empty spot next to one of them is actually supposed to be occupied, or vice versa.

Solution: after changing text size, drag all icons anywhere--even back into their current location--and they will re-align and re-snap-to-grid. Then other icons can be dragged next to them as per usual.

Solution 2

I've seen this happen sometimes when the text size in the desktop's View Options is set larger than 12 pt. and arrange by Snap to Grid is enabled. Try reducing the text size. Simply enlarging the grid spacing doesn't seem to work.

Comments

[trolle3000]

Do you have 'Keep arranged by Kind / Date Created' or one of the other options enabled?

[Philip]

Nope. Only align to grid.

[Philip]

Actually your answer helped me figure out what I think the correct answer is. Thanks.

[Allen Howard]

Welcome to SuperUser! This "answer" really should just be a vote up on Phillip's answer as it was already answered. You could also add this as a comment, like this one, but that does require a little bit of reputation first.