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Comment by deathanatos | Hacker News Reader

> why they hate Finder

I can never remember how to open a file; it should be easy, like Enter (rename?!) or Space (open a window with the icon made huge?) or maybe even desperately Shift+Space (same as Space, but animate it much more slowly and don't let you kill it until it's done animating many rage-inducing seconds later!) (It's Cmd+O.)

Navigate to? (I don't think it exists.)

Copy works, but move doesn't.

There's no delete. Trash doesn't count.

Instead of just dropping a "+" in the sidebar, it's completely non-apparent how to modify the favorites. Not on the list? The user's home folder. (It's configurable, but it's buried in the preferences, and even then, it's a set list. If your favorite isn't on the list, tough.)

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It's a menu command; ⌘O for Open, or ⌘+DownArrow for Navigate Into (as opposed to ⌘+UpArrow for Navigate Out/Enclosing Folder). You can search for menu commands in any app's Help menu (try it!)

Other than "That's how it works in Windows so it should be like that in every OS" people don't really give a reason for WHY Enter should be used for launching apps and files from a file manager. To me using Enter to enter text editing (rename) feels more intuitive and personally, I appreciate that you cannot accidentally start processes with a single keypress.

As for modifying favorites, drag items into the Sidebar. How is that not intuitive? Common locations are in the Go menu.

"Delete Immediately" is Alt+Option+Backspace, which shows up when searching for "Delete" in the Help search box, but again, when working in the GUI the Trash is supposed to remain a default safeguard against accidental deletion.

You can change most shortcuts for any app from System Preferences -> Keyboard.

No offense, but you should RTFM. You can move and delete and go to folder. As with many Apple UIs these "advanced" features are not easily discovered.

I think his point are those aren't advanced feature but basic feature that should be intuitive.

I've used many file managers on Windows and Linux and Finder is the only one I still (after a couple of years of use) have trouble doing things I would consider basic. Usually I just give up and use the commandline instead.

I Googled the open shortcut prior to writing the post; I'll admit I didn't Google them all.

It seems that move is possible, it's ⌘+C, ⌥+⌘+V, but that really doesn't feel intuitive (though you might argue I'm too used to Win/Linux keyboard commands). Finder's own context menu only denotes ⌘+X, unless you hold ⌥, which I just learned after wondering how the search box was able to find this item in the menu that I'd never seen.

Found some other ones. I didn't think moving or opening a file was an "advanced" feature. Opening in particular seems like such a prominent, common operation that it should have a more prominent place on the keyboard than ⌘+O

> RTFM

Is there a manual? The Help's search was a bit useful in pointing out some menu items I'd missed, but the menu really just has "Mac Help", which appears to be about the entire OS, not Finder.

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