Where does Mac OS X save the list of items/icons it shows in the Finder sidebar?

Solution 1:

The Finder Sidebar is defined in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist. It may be stored in binary. If you have a property list editor, this won't matter; if you don't, you'll want to convert it to XML first:

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Then, open it in a text editor. There's probably an entry like so in there:

<dict>
    <key>Icon</key>
    <data>…</data>
    <key>CustomItemProperties</key>
    <dict>
        <key>com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector</key>
        <integer>1935819892</integer>
    </dict>
    <key>Name</key>
    <string>Desktop</string>
    <key>Alias</key>
    <data>…</data>
</dict>
</plist>

(Note the key Name with string value Desktop.)

Delete that whole <dict> node, and save.