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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.

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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?

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...

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

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