OS X :: Column View In Finder And Date Modified Option List
Aug 3, 2010
So I like the hierarchical structure Column View has, and I don't have to double click to open folders.
username > documents > school > biology > lectures > file
But, I also like the "Date Modified" option List View has. Can I have both?
No sign, look: Yet, in stacks it's one of the 5 choice views? Am I missing something very obvious, or is this not (one of) the biggest oversights 'ever', on Apple's part?
Is there a way to add a column in the list view that shows what folder a file is in? I know it shows it at the bottom of the window, but that doesn't help me.
The default 'document' column is way too wide and forces you eye to track all the way across the screen to read info like "date modified', 'kind' or 'size'.  Tried several times to create a narrower default 'document name' column with no results. Couldn't find anything in preferences or view options. Tried dragging column headers while holding the down the option key with no results.  Every time I open a new finder window, all columns except the 'document' column affixed to the right side of the window. Also, when you grab the bottom right corner of a window to resize smaller, the lists become re-affixed to the right side of the window when opening the window back up.  Experiencing the same problem in Mavericks 10.9.3 on an iMac and Macbook Pro Retina.
The services I use that work on files and folders in Finder do not appear in the services menu when a folder is highlighted in column view. Instead I see a 'No Services Apply' message. The strange thing is that they all work flawlessly on files and folders when run from the services menu in any other view (icon, list or cover flow) or the right click menu in any view. This is frustrating because the shortcuts I assigned do not work in column view.
When I have a Finder window open, and I press cmd-j to bring up view options, I get a "Use As Defaults" button at the bottom for all views except column! How do I use Column view as my system default for all windows?
Can you change the default size of the widths of the columns when you open Finder in Column View? I'm getting tired of grabbing the drag-bars and adjusting every time just so I can read the truncated text in sub-folders.
After a few months mild use on OS X I'm starting to get used to it more and more now. I love the column view, but find it really annoying that occasionally new finder windows will open in Icon view. What exactly is the point of the finder preference "always open new windows in column view"? It sounds pretty straight forward, but finder doesn't exactly pay much attention to it. When I'm viewing in column view and I command-double click a folder, finder will open a new window in Icon view, depsite my preference. I have to reset the new window to column view and then close it, and then when I repeat the command-double click it will open in column view but it kinda defeats the point. I've read numerous posts about finder not remembering views, I don't understand also why there's only an option for column view? why isn't there "always open in list view" or "always open in icon view" option?
Is there (or will there ever be) any way to change the white default color of finder windows in column and list views? Or is there a 3rd party app? You can change them in icon view but that's the only view I never use. My eyes get so tired staring at white all day. If I could make all my windows dark grey I could work longer, better, happier. Would also love to make the Mail app dark.
I have a folder where I place an ever growing collection of my favorite songs. Before I switched to Mac, on Windows, when I wanted to revisit songs I most recently added to the folder, I would sort the songs by the Date Modified and it would order the files I placed in the folder by date.
In OSX, however, there must be a slightly different meaning to "Date Modified," as it does not quite sort my songs by the order they were added. It gets some of it right, but there's plenty of files that are out of order--tune "x", which I know was placed in the folder a week ago is actually listed further down the list with songs placed in the folder months ago.
Is there a way to have OSX sort files in order of the date it was placed in a folder? Neither "Date Modified" nor "Date Created" works 100% as I thought it would. Or is the OSX definition of Date Modified/Created slightly different than Windows?
since I don't know when, the columns in Finder windows have always the same size. If I change the size, and then close the windows, when I open a new one, the column get back to their "original size" (which is too small for my personal use).Â
Under Leopard and prior, in List view you can highlight a line by selecting anywhere on the line. However, to actually select the file to drag it, etc, you had to select the file name itself, clicking the date etc wouldn't allow you to drag the file.
Well, in Snow Leopard, you can now select anywhere on the line and it will allow you to drag the file(s). Pretty nice.
However.....this causes a weird UI issue. If the window you are working in is small enough so that the items in list view fill it up completely (so there is a scroll bar), you can no longer right click on any empty space or the date/filesize etc to pull up the contextual menu for example to create a New Folder.
If there is empty space below the file list, then it still allows you to right click to get the menu.
I'd like all my finder windows to appear the same when navigating through folders, but I'm noticing that finder is not always taking notice of the "set as defaults" button. The way I've tried to do it is to open a finder window and push cmd+J. I prefer the list view, so I check the "always open in list" box, set the icon size and uncheck "icon preview".
However, as I navigate deeper into folders, I notice some folders will no longer remember these and for example, will start to show the icon preview. In Windows, I remember you used to set up a random window to appear exactly how you wanted it, enter folder options and hit "default view for all windows".
Maybe this was discussed elsewhere; if so, I couldn't find it:
Often I need to select multiple separate items from a large folder of them; I use list view, and command-click on each item, and then drag the whole batch to the appropriate location. It appears that in Snow Leopard (unlike previous OS X versions), when if I scroll down the list to select further items, it jumps back to the top-most selected item after a couple seconds. This makes it completely impossible to select further items! Is there a preference to turn this "function" off? Why would anyone want such a thing? Even if it is what the Finder is meant to do, it seems implemented poorly, since if I grab the scrollbar slider and drag it down below my selected items, after the couple seconds the view jumps back to the topmost item, but the slider doesn't move. All it all, it feels like a glitch.
For those of you who know Windows, you can view your folders/files in a list but still re-arrange by type/kind (i.e. I will get the folders first, then the different kinds of files).
In finder my date created or the date modified (it is the same case for both) is displaying as "Nov. 4, 2008/2009" depending on whether or not it was created this year or last year. Obviously I have not created/modified every file on my computer on this date.
I have a few RAR files I downloaded from the internet. They are sitting in my Downloads folder. These are some of the latest files I've downloaded, but when I sort by Modified and Created Date, they are scattered throughout the folder. The dates the files have are from before I even downloaded them.
I'm used to Windows where I could sort by Modified or Created date and I could see the latest files I downloaded in descending order from the most recent to the oldest. So, is OSX different, am I misunderstanding something or is there something weird about these RAR files? Furthermore, when I unpack the RAR files, their modified/created date is not today's date.
When I import photos from my camera into iPhoto, their date/time (when they were actually taken) is shown with you Get Info in iPhoto, but when I copy the images or view the actual files, the Date Modified is when they were imported, not taken. How can I copy the images with the date/time they were actually taken?
Why does the date column show time? In the Date Added column it shows the actual time it was added. I don't want to see this. Is there a way to remove it?
Normally, a Folder "Date Modified" does not change unless the folder itself changes (name, etc). Is it possible to "force" a Folder "Date Modified" timestamp to change when an enclosed file is changed/updated? I want to look at a folder and know the date/time of the latest enclosed file/folder change. This is especially important to me when using syncing apps as I want to visually see by a folders date that a sync has occurred (the actual file change may be deeply nested within the folder.)
Maybe I really don't know what I'm doing. On my regular finder I can have a list and manipulate the order. (i.e. change the order from the oldest to the most recent. Or even largest to smallest files) This is normal to me. What I don't understand is that when I create a search, I don't have that option to adjust the order of the date created, size, etc. When I try to adjust the options view in the search, it will not allow me to.
To stop the lagging of broswing server folders using OSX column view, I'd like to disable the 'icon preview' in OSX as the caching if the icon previews is what is grinding out fileserver browsing on our AFP server down. In Leopard 10.5 this option/checkbox is visible under the Finders View Options but on our Tiger Macs, the icon preview checkbox is missing?
Under View Options there are only the other two checkboxes visible which are the preview column and show icons. In Tiger you can turn off Icon Preview for desktop items as the icon preview option is available when you ctrl+click on the desktop but I cant seem to do it for anywhere else, in particular for when I browse server folders.
I inadvertently hit some random key and can no longer see my mail in column view - the only way to see it is to go into File>New Viewer Window but this does not stay that way.
Lion keeps dafaulting to the Column view which I find useless and annoying. I cannot find any preference setting to default to the more functional List view.