If you reboot, or logout, then you have to restart Finder once logged in to get the colored icons back. I solved this by adding a plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/. You can name the plist anything you like. I went with 'com.example.color.sidebar.plist'. Here's the plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>com.example.color.sidebar</string>
	<key>KeepAlive</key>
	<false/>
	<key>RunAtLoad</key>
	<true/>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/bin/bash</string>
		<string>-c</string>
		<string>killall Finder; open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app</string>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

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I like the plist, but it is a pain to use because it closes the two Finder windows that I normally have open.

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And manually restarting Finder doesn't?

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Relaunching Finder from Force Quit in the Apple menu does not close my Finder windows. I tried to make an Automator app to do it from Force Quit but was unsuccessful.

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It's better to quit an application normally, not force-quitting it. You can do it two ways for the Finder:
Use an AppleScript: Tell application "Finder" to quit
Show the Quit menu item with an hidden command, certainly available in MacOSXHints.

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jsumners, could you provide a bit of information about this solution? Installing the plist: I assume I save that text in a plain text file? Activating it: do I do anything to activate it, or does it run automatically on restart? Thanks in advance!

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It is a plain text document with the ".plist" extension. The launchd agent will process any valid plists in ~/Library/LaunchAgents whenever launchd runs. That is, you don't have to do anything. Just put the file in place and the next time you login, and subsequent logins, it will be run.

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My problem solved as follows:

After putting the plist file in the LaunchAgents folder you must then Relaunch Finder to first show the coloured sidebar icons, then after a Shut Down, Log Out or Restart the next and subsequent Start Ups or Log Ins will always show the coloured sidebar icons in Finder windows.

Failure to initialise thus will result in no coloured icons being shown in subsequent Start Ups, Log Ins or Restarts.

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The preference file didn't work for me when I put it in my ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ folder but it did when I moved it to my HD/Library/LaunchAgents/ folder. There is worked as advertised with no problems at all.

Thanks.

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oh my dudes,look out for that simbl thing as it has borked my macs many times.

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i've used SIMBL for years, literally since 10.4 Tiger. never had any major issues with it. if there is a problem, it's usually a misbehaving plugin bundle, not SIMBL itself. right now i have 5 SIMBL plugins installed and haven't had any system problems.

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Thanks sfgecko and jsumners for the tip and the plist. Together they bring the colored sidebar back.

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This is exactly what I wanted since switching to Lion. One of the best hints ever. :-)

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Looks like a great hint, but I will not install buggy plugins like SIMBL just to have colored icons.

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works fine for me. i've been using colorfulsidebar for several months now. i also use several other simbl plugins and system is rock solid stable.

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Didn't work for me at all. Regardless of fiddling with restarts, restarting Finder, etc.

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The plist works fine on my MacBook but I can't get it to work at all on my iMac, both have the same version of Mac OS X installed ie 10.7.2. So what's gone wrong?

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Ditto. Put the plist file in Library/LaunchAgents, quit and restarted Finder, and no change. Logged out and back. No change.

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It did absolutely nothing altho I followed the instructions to the letter!!!

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After a few hours my Finder started acting wonky, so I ripped all of this stuff out and things returned to normal. As much as I like the colored icons, I am not willing to have things installed that start messing with my kit!

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maybe you have some other plugin or extension messing with finder. this plugin alone would not do anything to make finder act weird. correlation does not imply causation.

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Not having an issue before applying this Hint, having the issue develop shortly after applying the Hint and then no longer having the issue immediately after removing the Hint, kind of implies causation to me.

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if you honestly believe that, then you are a fool. most of the people here have no problem with it, everyone i know personally who installed it has no problem with it, others on different forums have no problem with it.

so i'll repeat again "correlation does not imply causation". you don't seem to understand what this actually means.

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There are a lot of issues with SIMBL and Lion:

http://code.google.com/p/simbl/issues/list

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I am having an issue with this... First off I love having the colors back there why Apple did away with them we may never know...

Everything works as described with the plist file however after a login/shutdown/restart the finder window's open with colors however as soon as I click on something within the window the colors disappear and return to the boring Lion colorless look. Any thoughts on this?

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Just note, if you're using Path Finder, this hint doesn't work there, sadly.

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Looks like the availability of colored disappears in Mountain Lion. I haven't diagnosed, but icons completely disappeared after upgrade until I removed the plugin.

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