I've never been able to get a good grip on what people find bad about Finder. Once View > Show Path Bar and View > Show Status Bar have been selected and current folder searching has been enabled in Preferences I don't find it any worse than Windows Explorer, GNOME Files, or any of the numerous derivations of GNOME Files (Nemo, Thunar, etc).
* Moving files is unintuitive. It should be [cmd+x] then [cmd+v]. Instead it's [cmd+c] then [option+cmd+v], and this behavior is not afforded in the UI, you just have to look it up somewhere.
* Search within finder does not search the current context by default, it searches your entire computer. "But you can change this setting!" You shouldn't have to change this setting, and most people don't know it's even there.
* Renaming multiple files is a chore. You expect to rename a file, then press tab to highlight the next file, and begin typing. Instead, you... do some combination of enter, tab, then enter again, except it never quite works the way you expect, and sometimes the file moves because the sorting changes after you pressed enter the first time, and for some reason pressing tab actually moves you to the next folder.
* Speaking of pressing [enter] on files, that should open them, not rename them.
* For that matter, pressing [delete] should delete files. You just have to know that the key for that is [cmd+delete], and that deleting things is called moving them to the trash.
* In general, the number of contextual commands you just have to discover by trial and error, or by looking them up on the internet, because they are hidden in the UI. Even the right-click menu doesn't list things like "open in slideshow", because the right click menu has a secret menu of its own which you have to press [cmd] to see.
* There is no preview panel visible by default, that's another option you have to turn on, like showing the file path. This stuff should all be on by default.
* You have to view file info in a separate window.
* It's not clear to me why I can't close Finder by pressing [cmd+q]. Quitting finder is usually all I want to do when it's open.
> Moving files is unintuitive. It should be [cmd+x] then [cmd+v]. Instead it's [cmd+c] then [option+cmd+v], and this behavior is not afforded in the UI, you just have to look it up somewhere.
That's discoverable by holding down Option while the Edit menu is open. This pattern of "revealing" additional functions with modifiers in menus has existed on macOS for a very long time.
> Speaking of pressing [enter] on files, that should open them, not rename them.
> For that matter, pressing [delete] should delete files. You just have to know that the key for that is [cmd+delete], and that deleting things is called moving them to the trash.
Adding a modifier to these functions helps prevent accidental irritating (opening 500 selected files) or potentially destructive (moving selected files to the trash) actions due to fat fingering, which is a particularly likely occurrence on laptops where edge keys like delete and return are easy to accidentally hit just moving around one's laptop. The accidental opening by hitting return one is something I've done several times over the years and it's never not infuriating.
On Windows, deleting a file moves it to the Recycle Bin which is functionally equivalent to what macOS does. In fact off the top of my head I don't know of a modern desktop environment that just directly deletes files without recourse.
> It's not clear to me why I can't close Finder by pressing [cmd+q]. Quitting finder is usually all I want to do when it's open.
Because the Finder powers the desktop too and its windows are not separate processes. In fact no application on macOS spawns additional windows as separate processes, that's a Windows/Linux thing.
> That's discoverable by holding down Option while the Edit menu is open. This pattern of "revealing" additional functions with modifiers in menus has existed on macOS for a very long time.
Ironically, holding down "Option" to see hidden menu items is not discoverable at all. Most people will only ever do it by accident. The point is that anything commonly desired should not be hidden like that.
There use to be MacWorld and MacUser for discovering these tips, conveniently scattered around the Math Dept tea room, or a very reasonable subscription. These days I've no idea how people discover these tips. TikTok? By chance on Twitter? Searching would be impossible.
> Because the Finder powers the desktop too and its windows are not separate processes. In fact no application on macOS spawns additional windows as separate processes, that's a Windows/Linux thing.
That Finder and the desktop are a single process is an implementation detail that should be hidden from UI mechanisms like this.
Either way, it would be a strange experience to hit Command-Q to “quit” (close all windows) the Finder only to land right back in the Finder (desktop) again.
Most of your criticisms can be explained by unfamiliarity with longstanding Mac conventions. But this is fair:
> Search within finder does not search the current context by default, it searches your entire computer. "But you can change this setting!" You shouldn't have to change this setting, and most people don't know it's even there.
The default behavior used to be great, ~10 years ago (extremely snappy search scoped to the current folder). The change to searching the whole computer with significant lag was an absurd and mysterious regression.
It might be worth excluding certain directories from Spotlight to prevent it from indexing node_modules etc which tend to be massive but mostly useless from a Spotlight search perspective.
> Moving files is unintuitive. It should be [cmd+x] then [cmd+v]. Instead it's [cmd+c] then [option+cmd+v], and this behavior is not afforded in the UI, you just have to look it up somewhere.
Apologies, but what do you expect to happen to the file in-between the cut and the paste? Cut content exists only on the pasteboard. If I cut a sentence from a document and then cut another sentence, the first sentence is effectively gone (without an additional clipboard manager).
This is why they went with the select-and-copy and select-and-move operations instead, and mapped them onto the copy/paste system. A true 'cut' would be too destructive.
Fair question! Windows does it pretty much the same way under the hood: the file is not affected until you paste it in the new location. If you never complete the paste, the cut command does nothing. The difference is the interaction maps to another, better-known one that is much easier to discover if you've used a text editor or word processor. I recall the default Ubuntu file manager working the same way, but I don't have an installation running at the moment.
On Windows, the cut file is dimmed out after you press [cmd+x] to indicate something has happened.
Also, the Mac way lets the user change their mind between copying the file or moving it without first navigating back to the source and restarting the process from scratch, since that decision sits on the pasting end.
In my mind the only advantage the Windows way has is that it belongs to the more popular platform.
> Apologies, but what do you expect to happen to the file in-between the cut and the paste?
I'd expect that nothing will happen, Cut will wait for paste operation. It's not delete, where content is gone immediately. If no paste will follow, then Cut is not executed. Cut marks file for move operation, if no move is executed, then nothing will be lost.
> If I cut a sentence from a document and then cut another sentence, the first sentence is effectively gone (without an additional clipboard manager).
We're talking about files here, not text. Text behaves differently. I'd argue that Cut operation as it is in text editors, is not logical but it is what it is and people are used to it. For deleting there's Delete operation, Cut should not be equal to Delete in some occasions.
You are arguing that "copy and paste" and "cut and paste" in the context of a file manager actually behave as "mark, then copy" and "mark, then move" operations.
Well, that's exactly how Finder works, isn't it? Cmd+C marks files, Cmd+V copies them, Cmd+Opt+V moves them.
You want Apple to break a lot of things Mac users are used to because you’re not used to them. You are clearly a Windows user and would benefit from buying a Mac user guide. Do they still update The Macintosh Bible? That sort of thing would help you a lot.
I was replying to a comment asking what people found bad about Finder. I replied with some things I find bad about Finder. If the response is "yer doin' it wrong" then I don't know how to proceed: what could possibly be wrong with Finder if it’s current formulation is defined as exactly the way it should be?
I guess I could also question the proposition that Apple doesn't change things people like about Macs. I could list a few examples of them doing that, too.
"This stuff should all be on by default" is also completely eschewing the notion that Apple's stuff is the result of decades of user-experience testing by now. It's that way because Apple users expect it to be that way.
If you want it different, you want Linux or a BSD.
I’ve been surprised by all the behaviors you listed after migrating from Linux and Windows to Mac years ago, but honesty this is just a different logic and it only took a few days to get used to it. Except for your point about search where I still don’t understand the logic today.
The most ridiculous missing feature is there’s no refresh button for the current folder. Sometimes to show new files created by an external process I have to relaunch the whole finder process just to have my files appear as it caches the stale view
Finder should show changes immediately except on certain external filesystems. It gets kernel events on directory and file changes (the same mechanism Spotlight and Time Machine use).
This bites me on fake FAT filesystems over USB for hardware development kits, and I usually just turn those features off. The heuristics there are often terrible, and I'd rather create a build system that writes a new image, instead of doing manual drag-and-drops.
That's a gripe I share, but I run into it so infrequently that it's not much of a bother. Most likely when browsing network shares and such, which I tend to use something like Transmit or Forklift for instead.
One problem I have with the finder is there is no "loading files" animation when browsing through folders. So if open a folder and it looks empty, its not clear if it is really empty, or if the finder is still trying to get a folder listing. Hard to look through and organize/delete files on external and network drives.
The main job of the Finder is finding files. Unfortunately the interface for doing that is the worst I've seen in any OS. Let's compare it with Windows 3.1's File Manager (which was the first GUI file manager I used).
1. Defaults to the columnar format. It's crazy - to move from a parent to child you've to move the mouse the whole width of the column. Whereas in Windows 3.1 File Manager, you'd have to move less than 10 pixels.
2. Now you could switch to the List View. But in Windows 3.1 File Manager, I can see a tree of directories on the left, and the directory contents on the right. That IMO is way cleaner than a single pane. Navigating to a child directory in the right pane also synchronizes the tree on the left pane. I can't be sure about the last one though because Win 3.1 was nearly 3 decades back, but I that's how it works today.
I remember using a version of Explorer that had collapsable hierarchical navigation on the left, as well as similar non-filesystem programs with a similar design and do not recall being fond of it. Especially on smaller screens it was easy for the left pane to become too small to fit the names of deeply nested directories, and then become too wide when collapsing them. To me at least that style is somewhat awkward and fiddly.
One thing that really makes Finder terrible is I can't copy path easily like I can in windows and even going to certain folder requires steps like clicking on Go To Folder etc.
Gnome File and Finder both have such issue. Gnome file manager at least provide ctrl + L.
The copy operation (⌘C) has an optional variant (⌥⌘C) which copies the pathnames to the clipboard as text rather than copying file references.
This will copy either the directory (if no selection) or the selected file(s).
If you enable the path bar, I believe this is also a copyable element.
Finally, dropping a file or directory into a plain text control that cannot take file or folder references (like this HN comment box) will fall back to the path name.
The Finder has an equivalent with Command-Shift-G, and if that key shortcut is too cumbersome it (along with all other Mac menu items) can be re-bound in System Preferences under the Keyboard prefpane.
Most of the things mentioned in this comment chain are easily discoverable in the Finder's menus… it really pays to peruse menus in Mac apps when searching for a function.
If you enable the path bar, you can right click on the path bar and "Copy as Pathname" on whatever is down there (which will be the current folder if nothing is selected, or whatever is selected).
If the path bar is showing a folder, you can right click it and select "Open in terminal".
FYI, holding option key with a directory or file selected and choosing "copy" will copy the path to the selected item. With nothing selected, it will copy the path to the location of the open finder window.
I have something that serves a similar purpose - a shell script that calls out to AppleScript to get the path of the most recently used Finder window and returns it as a string:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
####################
# Description: Get the path of the most recently used Finder window
# Author: Ancapistani
# Version: 1.0.0
####################
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"'\
-e "if (${1-1} <= (count Finder windows)) then"\
-e "get POSIX path of (target of window ${1-1} as alias)"\
-e 'else' \
-e 'get POSIX path of (desktop as alias)'\
-e 'end if' \
-e 'end tell';
If the preference to use System 7-style spatial Finder worked consistently I’d be happy. Unfortunately new media (DMGs, USB drives, network connections etc) still open in browser windows by default. I wonder how many times I’ve pressed cmd-option-T over the years.
