I’ll say that as much as I love Apple and macOS, Finder has some pretty terrible defaults that make file management pretty difficult for the average user. The default “All Files” view is atrocious.
Because if you’re looking for a subfolder you’re not looking for a file, and vice versa? It doesn’t matter much in sparse directories, but it annoys me having to scroll through a ton of files to find the folder I want in directories with both.
I too like a lot of things about Mac, but finder could be improved, for sure.
(I have gotten used to a lot of its features and hate Windows’ defaults too, so there’s that. I don’t think an ideal exists, unless it’s in Linux somewhere and I just need to dual boot the desktop and get it over with)
On macOS I just type the first few letters of the file/folder and because it’s in alphabetical order, I find it immediately. I don’t want to have to think “oh is this a file or a folder” then scroll around to the appropriate area.
This reminds me of users who complain about <select> fields on websites: they always want some weird sorting instead of just tabbing into the field and typing a few letters.
Thar makes sense, although I am generally not trying to use the keyboard at the same time (to be honest I was not aware you could filter a finder view like that, I thought it only ran search and I have never found MacOS’s search to be satisfactory)
I grew up on Windows but when I came to macOS I went hard into key commands; the UI is a lot more uniform so using a combination of key commands and Trackpad gestures you can fly through tasks pretty quickly.
Depends on how you use your computer.
Plenty of people would tell you that using a GUI file manager and cutting/moving files is inefficient on any platform as opposed to just using a terminal.
There are times where it’s nice to drag a file or group of files and have Finder show me the content of the destination folder before I decide to drop the files. But sure I could do that with 3 mouse clicks and 4 keyboard taps.
I think that terminal only or primarily terminal is valuable, a combination of mouse and keyboard with shortcuts is valuable, and also the ability to just use your mouse (especially helpful for accessibility) is also valuable, and they all should be supported.
I’ll say that as much as I love Apple and macOS, Finder has some pretty terrible defaults that make file management pretty difficult for the average user. The default “All Files” view is atrocious.
I HATE that windows will sort folders at the top instead of alphabetically with everything else. I guess it comes from using a Mac for so long.
I agree about .DS_Store in any mixed os environment though.
Yeah, I don’t know why having folders at the top would make anything easier.
Because if you’re looking for a subfolder you’re not looking for a file, and vice versa? It doesn’t matter much in sparse directories, but it annoys me having to scroll through a ton of files to find the folder I want in directories with both.
I too like a lot of things about Mac, but finder could be improved, for sure.
(I have gotten used to a lot of its features and hate Windows’ defaults too, so there’s that. I don’t think an ideal exists, unless it’s in Linux somewhere and I just need to dual boot the desktop and get it over with)
On macOS I just type the first few letters of the file/folder and because it’s in alphabetical order, I find it immediately. I don’t want to have to think “oh is this a file or a folder” then scroll around to the appropriate area.
This reminds me of users who complain about
<select>fields on websites: they always want some weird sorting instead of just tabbing into the field and typing a few letters.Thar makes sense, although I am generally not trying to use the keyboard at the same time (to be honest I was not aware you could filter a finder view like that, I thought it only ran search and I have never found MacOS’s search to be satisfactory)
I grew up on Windows but when I came to macOS I went hard into key commands; the UI is a lot more uniform so using a combination of key commands and Trackpad gestures you can fly through tasks pretty quickly.
I haven’t memorized everything, so file folders grouped together is easier.
Having the option to choose to sort either way would be the best option.
What is a spring-loaded folder?
https://techpp.com/2021/08/17/mac-spring-loaded-folders-guide/
I use that all the time but never knew it had a specific name.
This doesn’t sound any easier than using Ctrl+X to cut files and Ctrl+V to paste them wherever you want to?
Depends on how you use your computer. Plenty of people would tell you that using a GUI file manager and cutting/moving files is inefficient on any platform as opposed to just using a terminal.
There are times where it’s nice to drag a file or group of files and have Finder show me the content of the destination folder before I decide to drop the files. But sure I could do that with 3 mouse clicks and 4 keyboard taps.
I think that terminal only or primarily terminal is valuable, a combination of mouse and keyboard with shortcuts is valuable, and also the ability to just use your mouse (especially helpful for accessibility) is also valuable, and they all should be supported.
Last I checked that’s not a Finder replacement. 😉
Why would you use the Finder when macOS has a perfectly fine shell?
zsh? I mean, I use that too… but what does that have to do with anything?You can do all file management operations from the command line. No need to use the Finder.
I don’t think the “average user” is going to drop Finder to use the terminal.
In fact though I’m not an “average user”and use
bash,zshpretty much every day, there are still some things I’d rather do in Finder.Image previews because I give my memes really dumb filenames