[stuntkite]

I have not used smart searches, and now I'm reading about them and it does look pretty cool. But that search bar should give me something sort of close to what I'm looking for in a couple strokes and it really doesn't.

I can specifically call out what my issues are with Finder.

- Where is my fucking folder tree. There was no reason to take it away other than "thinking different" just like the backspace key. Super special guys.

- Search bar does not behave in a way that I think comes close to useful for quick search.

- Why does the window default to something so small and not have an obvious way to set the default spawn size to something reasonable. At this point it should be context aware.

- I don't want more windows, I want tabs too.

- The sliding cell browsing is cumbersome, it sometimes forces you into a folder when you are trying to be in it's parent, it limits your view of your total file list, and in this view there is no way (that I know of) to utilize ordering without the dropdown, so you are stuck with hitting the first letter of the file you think might be there to try to get there quick.

- let me make symlinks from the UI.

- The list view is great for the most part, but since you don't have a tree you have to either loose your browsing context to move to a new folder or you have to open a new window... and it will be too small. Then when you try to drag things into the new window, that probably defaulted to the sliding cell view floating around to get where you want to go will inevitably have you dropping the file somewhere bad. This was the most egregious before Lion when "cut and paste" did not exist. You could enable something that called itself that but it didn't do it and used the trash? Mostly it was just delete.

- I can't preview a file in the list view without hitting space and blocking my view of my context.

- It appears to be designed to keep you away from the system HD. More and more so with every release. I want to look at my filesystem, it it's entirety, easily and without using "go".

- Because you can ONLY use finder for getting files from an application you are stuck with usually a default view that is just a directory dropdown. Then you open it up and it's the slider cell. Then you get trapped and you can't go up a single directory so you have to go to a directory that you used recently, hopefully.... if not you have to go to you user root and navigate down a train.

- If you're gonna be designed to keep normal users "safe" then maybe let me have a button that does "open ssh in directory."

- Drag and drop file copying is laggy as fuck and produces constant problems with relocating files. It's always been the same level of unpredictable and now I'm just trained to sit there and wait for the green +. If the UI is going to be so restrictive and drag copy centric, then this should be like lightning.

- Let me use cli applications from the UI. A right click is fine, a button is ok, a hot key is better. This is a Unix based system. Give me that option, out of the box.

- Without any customization, the program should be focused on less clutter, not more. The defaulting to opening new tiny windows that get left in a stack is bad. I sort of get the DMG open window install process when we were back in the CD days like 12 years ago. Now it's ugly, and shitty, and gives leeway to software providers to just do dumb illegible stuff. It seems that the rendering of the DMG install windows changes over time and that breaks the desired UI for older packages. This thing needs to die.

----

I want to be able to move down a tree looking at files like the cell does, with filtering, with a tree on the left, with easy file previews, to any place I can write on my system. Maybe that includes downloading a file from Chrome into /opt. File browsing is a noise heavy data intensive problem sometimes. If you are going to arbitrarily make the most basic tool on the system default to an oddly specific size, well then in use you should do some context detection and expand when there's a huge god damned list of files in the folder. I. Should. Always. Be. Able. To. Sort. And. See. My. Sorting. Options.

If any of this is available, please give me protips.

[pwinnski]

Unfortunately, your points aren't numbered, but I'm confused by a couple of them.

- Finder has had tabs for a few releases, and I can't recall the last time I had multiple Finder windows open at the same time. I use tabs for everything.

- By "sliding cell" do you mean the columns view? I use the list view roughly 100% of the time, so I'm no help there.

- On my system, quicklook opens a preview to the left of the finder window, so it doesn't cover the finder window. I think I must have moved it over there in the past, and it remembers.

- My system shows me every single dotfile, hidden file, and everything. I don't recall which setting I used for that, but zero things are hidden.

- Do you not have right-click, Services, New Terminal Tab at Folder? If not, then that must be something I installed in ages past.

Finder isn't perfect, by any means. It conflicts with how I like to do things semi-regularly. But I think a few of the issues you've raised might be solvable. At least that would lessen your pain a little.

Some of the differences between the defaults and what I see on my system might be down to this: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.macos

[sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg]

For showing "system hidden files", most popular is the ~/Library, run this command in terminal

    defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

For toggle display of hidden & dot files, type "Shift + Cmd + ."

[majewsky]

I can already see how n-gate is going to summarize this thread:

> An internet complains about how macOS documentation is only transmitted by tribal knowledge. Hackernews acknowledges the problem, and proceeds to trade said knowledge in exchange for internet points.

[sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg]

You are not wrong, but my account is throw-away just for this thread. Not hoarding HN points, that is a ridiculous behavior.

[majewsky]

Don't worry; I didn't mean to bash on you. I just saw the irony of the thread.

[BakaRakuda]

A lot of these just seem like you aren't familiar with the Finder, did you check the menus, preferences, or do a web search for Finder tips?

- No folder tree you are correct. I don't miss it personally. Gotta just deal with this one I think.

- What way specifically does the search not work for you? It's incredibly powerful and you can search by file name, content, file type, creation date, etc.

- It should save the window size you last set it as on a per folder basis when you open a new window from a location. Don't really have any troubles with how it works personally.

- Finder has tabs. Command+T

- Not 100% clear on the problem exactly. If you're going into the wrong folder you don't just have to select a folder by the first character, just keep typing and it will jump to the matching folder name in a list.

- File -> Make Alias

- This one is a bit unclear too. Use spring loaded folders, or a new tab in the location you want to drop to or add the folder to the sidebar that you want to drop files to. Cut and Paste with same named files is a lot better than it used to be and basically works fine now, IMO.

- View -> Show Preview

- Indeed it is designed to keep people away from the system files. 95% of people shouldn't be in there. And of the remaining 1% most of them shouldn't either even if they think otherwise. :P

If you actually need to muck in the system files you can toggle their display in the Finder via a terminal command.

- Command + Up Arrow to go up a directory

- You can open a directory in the terminal easily in a number of ways, including dragging and dropping the folder into the terminal window or icon, using the services menu, etc.

- I don't really find drag and drop copying to be slow in general, are you on a spinning HDD? Anyway with High Sierra the new APFS will make copying files instantaneous.

- There are various services you can use or you can create your own automator services, folder actions etc. to do a multitude of things.

- Finder is decently clutter free IMO, AND it can do a lot of sophisticated things as well.

[someone7x]

I'm not GP, but I recently sank time into trying to change Finder searches to default to the current directory instead of my entire machine. It mildly infuriates me that I can't change this; I gave up after I saw com.apple.finder.plist is not plaintext.

[comex]

Plist files have two standard encodings, an XML-based textual one and a binary one. You can use plutil to convert between the two, e.g.

    plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.Finder.plist

However, for preferences you probably want to use the `defaults` command instead, because IIRC they’re managed by a daemon (cfprefsd) that might not notice if you modify the backing files while it’s running.

[concede_pluto]

When someone decides a config file needs two different serializations and a daemon, I'm reminded of https://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html.

[comex]

The two different encodings aren't just for config files; property lists are used throughout the OS for all sorts of things. They're a serialization of standard data structures such as arrays and dictionaries: same idea as JSON, decades before JSON. In retrospect, the XML-based text format is excessively verbose, but back then XML was all the hotness… As for the binary format, well, even given JSON's relative succinctness, there are many different formats that attempt to fill the role of 'binary JSON' (BSON, BJSON, JSON-B, MessagePack, CBOR, UBJSON, Fleece, PSON). It's just that none of them have become ubiquitous, probably because of some combination of fragmentation and the lack of built-in browser support.

As for the daemon, among other benefits, it allows preference changes to be immediately visible across all processes on the system, rather than requiring manual action to reload from disk. See:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Dat...

[kitsunesoba]

Default search scope is an option in the Finder's preferences window and has been ever since 10.7...

[stuntkite]

Thanks for your point for point response mate. I'm going to take a look at all of it.

Sorry for the points that were unclear. They are general frustrations that I've had. This looks like it'll help with a lot!

[sd8dgf8ds8g8dsg]

> - It appears to be designed to keep you away from the system HD. More and more so with every release. I want to look at my filesystem, it it's entirety, easily and without using "go".

One "pro tip" is use "Cmd + Up arrow" to navigate one level above current folder.

Also, Finder creates ".DS_Store" files in each folder, which remembers current folder display. If you want to enforce say "List files" view everywhere, you will also need to nuke these from your system.

There is Path Finder, which is a good software (Shareware) that has a more traditional take on file explorer software, which might be good to check out if you are coming from Windows or Linux.

Myself, I'm just giving Finder a second chance, after having used Path Finder for a couple of years. It is well worth learning some of the key combos for better use.

Here is some more:

In finder, or in a "Open file" dialog, you can type "Shift + Cmd + G" to get a "Go to folder" dialog.

In finder, or in the "Open file" dialog, you can type "Shift + Cmd + ." to toggle "Show hidden files" (.dot files).

[stuntkite]

Thanks for the pro tips homie! I'm taking this and some of the other responses and making a cheat sheet. You guys have genuinely improved my situation.

[comex]

You may know this, but from column view you can use the toolbar or a keyboard shortcut to do 'Arrange By', which is not exactly a sort but similar. (It splits files into groups based on intervals of the specified property, and the groups are sorted, but the files aren't sorted within the groups.) Alternately, it's not exactly the most streamlined option, but you can change 'Sort By' from the window that pops up from Cmd-J.