Photoshop 2026 Sony ARW Finder icon issue

[Misuzu33795511cvd5]

This is kind of a minor cosmetic issue. When I disable icon previews in a folder containing RAW files on macOS Sequoia, the Canon CR2 icons show as expected, but the Sony ARW icons appear as generic blue Photoshop icons. What's the deal here?

[Srishti Bali]

Hi @Misuzu33795511cvd5,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry for the delayed response. I am hopeful that the issue is fixed by now.  This looks more like a file association behavior on macOS rather than something Photoshop directly controls. macOS handles icon previews and file associations differently from Windows, so in some cases certain RAW formats (like ARW) may default to a generic app icon instead of displaying a format-specific one. If the issue still persists, you can try manually changing the file association to see if it improves the icon display:

• Right-click an ARW file

• Choose Get Info

• Under Open With, select Photoshop (or another preferred app)

• Click Change All

It may or may not fix the cosmetic icon issue, but it’s worth trying. Let us know if you see any change after adjusting the association.

Regards,

Srishti

[Misuzu33795511cvd5 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the suggestion. The .ARW files are already associated with Photoshop. It turns out, for some reason Photoshop has never had an icon for Sony .ARW raw files. While Photoshop has specific icons for Canon and Nikon raw files, along with a few other raw formats, for some reason Sony .ARW raw files show a generic Photoshop icon. I see this as a shortcoming of Photoshop that should be addressed.

The reason this issue specifically came up in Photoshop 2026 is that the generic file icon, up until 2025, used to be a white page with "PS" over it. Starting with Photoshop 2026 it has changed to a solid dark blue icon and it looks very similar to a native .PSD file. So it's much more difficult to differentiate the Sony raw files from PSDs in a list when icon previews are turned off. I think this new icon is misleading.

And don't get me started on Photoshop PSD preview icons! That's a whole other longstanding problem!