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Comment by InMice | Hacker News Reader

Clicking on folders that you have put in Finders sidebar - It will not display the folder with the view settings set for that folder, but instead the last folder you clicked in the sidebar. It seems to happen clicking from top to bottom vs bottom to top. You just cant make this sh*t up it's so bad.

Example sidebar:

Applications - Always shows as icons

Documents - Shows as icons if you last clicked on Applications. Shows as details if last you clicked on Downloads

Downloads - Always shows as details

Finder is the absolute worst we could write a book about it. Once a year or so all my sidebar folders randomly vanish and I have to re-add them.

Also The most annoying "it's a feature, not a bug" - That instant drop down of the title bar in full screen if the mouse cursor hits the top edge of the screen. So obnoxious with remote desktop sessions. No delay, no way to disable it, no way to change anything about it.

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Finder has stopped being a spatial file manager for a long time, but still mistakenly tries to behave like one in too many places, probably because of lingering legacy code more than a particular intent.

IMHO they should simply rip the spatial bits out entirely and it would immediately become a better file manager purely from the restored consistency.

What the heck is a spatial file manager

Each folder has a remembered display state. If in large icon mode, you can drag icons around into the positions you want and they'll stay that way the next time you visit the folder.

The idea is that it's not directories that are just bags of files, but files occupy spatial locations in folder windows.

Ah, this makes sense. Am I hallucinating that columns widths used to be remembered many years back? In other words, in column view, if you resized a column for a given folder, close Finder, and reopen to that folder—it would remain the same width.

Finder is mostly unusable for any directory containing long filenames since it doesn’t remember this. But I swear it used to. Am I misremembering?

I just tested and for me they seem to be remembered for my Downloads folder. Weirdly, at first it didn't seem to be remembered, but then I pressed ⌘+J to look at the view settings, and now when I change a column width it seems to be remembered...

Weird! I’ll test this out, thanks

FWIW, there is a hidden option to automatically resize columns to accommodate the longest (up to a point) visible file name:

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/26/hidden-pref-col...

Essentially John Siracusa's preferred file browsing environment

Besides the sibling comments, it is how Finder used to work in Mac OS Classic.

I was just today complaining that Finder seems to want to be a file browser, but it makes it nearly impossible to actually browse the file system. Ridiculous dropping down to ls in a terminal on a supposedly polished OS.

I really wish Apple would allow us to swap out the Finder with something else, so files open in that other app instead of the Finder. This works reasonable well on Windows, where I "replaced" the Explorer with Directory Opus.

This used to be possible, I remember that I replaced Finder with some other app many years ago. I strongly assume that this doesn't work any more, though.

Yeah. Path Finder was a common power user tool.

I recall you used to be able to flip some bit somewhere to allow you to Quit the Finder, but I assume that's disappeared inside the encrypted and signed partition where Apple keeps all the things us stupid users shouldn't be allowed to touch.

But even then, you'd want more than just that, as when you tell the OS to "Reveal" a file or open a folder, that's the association I'd want to be able to change.

Honestly I'd really prefer the Windows XP File Explorer to the pile of crap the Finder has turned into.

  > I recall you used to be able to flip some bit somewhere to allow you to Quit the Finder

you can still do this with a hidden preference using command line:

  defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool true; killall Finder

[0] https://www.defaults-write.com/adding-quit-option-to-os-x-fi...

  > But even then, you'd want more than just that, as when you tell the OS to "Reveal" a file or open a folder, that's the association I'd want to be able to change.

yep, that should just be a normal setting like default browser (one thing i like about linux nowadays)

TinkerTool is a nice GUI app for this setting and a few others, see https://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

oh wow its been a long time; i forgot about that one, i'll have to download that again

Ah yes, thank you for reminding me - of course, it was Path Finder! You could even have it respond to "Reveal". Not sure any more if it was by renaming Path Finder to /Applications/Finder, or by changing its Bundle id to com.apple.finder, or some other trick.

"of course, it was Path Finder! You could even have it respond to 'Reveal'"

This still works. I have been using macs since 1985 and have always hated the Finder. In the days of classic Mac OS, my go to for file management was a desk accessory called DiskTop, which was great. Super fast and easy to operate from the keyboard.

When I switched to OSX, I needed something better than the Finder, chose Path Finder, and have been using it ever since. I have my complaints about it but have not been able to find anything I like better.

Ooooh, I always though it just doesn't remember any view settings at all

I cant quite figure it out exactly either. Seemingly random, then sometimes there's partial order. I honestly have to close my eyes and take deep breaths in thru the nose out the mouth while sitting at my desk while trying to get stuff done LOL. Im just so sick of decades of these stupid bugs.

The confusing part is that it sometimes remembers things when you open a folder directly, like from an alias you open on your desktop, or typing `open ~/Documents`... But when Finder gets confused seems to be that when you shift between folders using the "browser-like" tools (back, forward, double-clicking a folder from the current folder), there's a disconnect: Should it act like a browser and use the current view, details columns, etc? or should it totally transform the view into what you had open at some point in the past?

I tend to try to hammer the Finder into always using "list view" with command-J, Always open in list view → Use as Defaults, but random folders can have their own settings attached, probably, so nothing works.

Finder really is a museum of unresolved UX decisions layered over decades

Switched from Windows to Macos years ago after work gave me a macbook pro. As life long ThinkPad red nipple guy, I love it.

The finder is the one thing I think Windows does marginally better with Explorer.

Trackpoint is also pretty nice once you get used to it. No hands off keyboard !

MacBooks do seem to have by far the best trackpads however

If only Explorer had a better extension mechanism than dealing with inproc COM in C++.

It would be about time to have better IPC mechanisms out of process.

that's not how it works for me in MacOS Tahoe, the sidebar works as it should now.

Just tested on Tahoe 26.1 and it's still happening as he described.

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