Rendered at 15:30:42 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
muppetman 20 hours ago [-]
As a Windows user for years until 2 years ago, I can’t believe how unusable finder is. It’s just terrible. I feel like it actively hides the filesystem from you at every turn.
Windows was bad but at least Explorer (windows 10 version anyway) let you easily SEE the file system
I’m sure as hell not buying a subscription project to fix that though lololol
jakevoytko 20 hours ago [-]
This was my instant reaction when I started using a Mac. But 15 years later, even knowing more tricks for interacting with it, it still baffles me. Once you've used Windows Explorer and a few Linux distro navigators, there's no denying that Finder is unquestionably worst in class.
klodolph 14 hours ago [-]
As a Mac user since the 1980s, I feel feel like Finder is easily best in class, even after ten or fifteen years of design. I would describe Windows Explorer as “embarrassingly bad” in comparison, despite having a good hold on the shortcuts.
I honestly think it is a matter of what you like rather than what is good or bad.
doubled112 17 hours ago [-]
Dolphin in KDE has to be one of my favourite GUI file managers ever.
Simple to use until you need it to be complicated, then it probably does what you’re looking for.
sho_hn 14 hours ago [-]
Our KDE development motto (and a contrast explained in our HIG) is "Simple by default, powerful when needed". It's nice to see someone re-state it so naturally and eloquently in the wild!
brnt 9 hours ago [-]
I can't thank KDE devs enough, so thanks :)
Not just Dolphin is among the best in class.
zug_zug 19 hours ago [-]
I agree 100%. Been using macs for 15 years now, but the windows XP explorer in particular was fundamentally objectively better than finder, and it's nuts they haven't figured it out.
One of the things I find most baffling is that in order to "go to a folder by path" (e.g. ~) you have to hit command-shift-G ? What kind of hidden witchcraft is this?
It feels like it was designed for people who cannot understand a directory structure. But even that is done poorly, because it's not particularly useful. That said, this kepter thing looks pretty bad too.
monkey_monkey 19 hours ago [-]
or you click on "Go" in the menu bar.
What key combo did you want that would be less 'magical'?
etrautmann 19 hours ago [-]
A path bar anywhere in the interface?
I also want this to be able to copy a file’s path. Right now I’m not even sure how to do that aside from cmd-i to get info and then clunkily drag select the parent dir to copy. Repeat for the file name. Am I insane or is there a better way? Just use terminal? For a time I used pathfinder which had a feature to copy the full path but I ended up hating the subscription and constant feature churn.
thrwkmmshf00083 6 hours ago [-]
Why not just enable the path / breadcrumb bar that shows at the bottom of the window and lets you copy a path or open a terminal via the context menu? I currently don't have a Mac in reach but I'm pretty sure the option for that is in the "view" menu.
Not a fan of Apples approach of making many functions invisible but I never understood all the complaints about Finder. I use Arch, MacOS and Windows (if I have to) and apart from having to reconfigure it slightly, I never had any particular issues with Finder. You also have to give Apple credit for their long-form manuals - which exist for most things they offer. It's pretty easy to see in threads like this one that many people apparently do not read them, though.
Wevah 18 hours ago [-]
Context menu → hold Option; “Copy” will change to “Copy <file> as Path”. (Sometimes you can just drag and drop the file to where you want to paste, but that depends on the destination app and so isn’t consistent.)
x2tyfi 36 minutes ago [-]
Another option, if you already have terminal open, is to drag the file/folder from Finder into your terminal window. The path will be pasted there.
MokaAkashiya 9 hours ago [-]
Surprisingly nobody suggested yet to just select file in Finder and press Option-Cmd-C to copy file path.
CharlesW 18 hours ago [-]
It's not unusual for Mac users to create custom shortcuts for things like this using built-in and 3rd-party tools like Shortcuts, Automator/AppleScript, Keyboard Maestro, Hammerspoon, etc.
For copying the path of a file specifically, in Finder you can hold Option and then pick Edit → Copy as Pathname.
SoftTalker 14 hours ago [-]
Just use the terminal. I've never found that a GUI was any good at managing files and directories. A shell and utility commands are far better.
pupppet 17 hours ago [-]
To Apple, files are an unsightly thing they need to sweep under the carpet, if you have to interact with files they probably believe they’ve done something wrong.
Look at Apple Mail, they used to bury attachments behind a button and even now they just drop them at the end of the email.
mrheosuper 9 hours ago [-]
> if you have to interact with files they probably believe they’ve done something wrong.
So it's wrong to be power user using mac.
pessimizer 14 hours ago [-]
Ignorance of how computers work is a moat. One that Apple influenced the entire industry to adopt.
Same reason the Church didn't want to translate the Bible into the vernacular. If you can read the Bible you don't need a priest, or at the least you can evaluate your priest knowledgeably and decide to go to a different one.
brnt 9 hours ago [-]
Then why did Apple keep the hierarchical file system when moving away from HFS? Could've gone with a kv-store kind of system.
pan69 19 hours ago [-]
When I started using a Mac many years ago, I also could not believe how terrible Finder is. This is software from the "design" company.
One of the biggest pitfalls I ran into at the time (and remember from the top of my head) was that when you copy a folder, and a folder with the same name already exists at the destination, it will quietly replace it, rather than giving me a dialog asking if I want to Replace or Merge.
Oh, that I can't switch on/off show hidden files, I have to run some command line command to do that...
tonyedgecombe 3 hours ago [-]
That has changed. I'm not sure when but it definitely asks me if I want to replace or merge.
thrwkmmshf00083 6 hours ago [-]
Of course MacOS asks you what you want to do when you copy over a folder and has done so forever. The keyboard shortcut to show hidden files has been mentioned already (it's even a logical one for once in Apple-Land) and the terminal command is straightforward and logical as well. Should they include a perma-toggle in the UI as well? I, personally, think yes but I also think it's pretty consistent with a certain approach to UI design to not include said button.
1 hours ago [-]
Wevah 18 hours ago [-]
You can press Command-Shift-. (period) to toggle hidden files. This isn’t very discoverable, though.
You can also hold Option while stopping a folder to get an additional Merge button, but at least one folder needs to have unique items.
rswail 6 hours ago [-]
Considering there's a Unix underneath, the logical of showing "dotfiles" that are usually hidden is possibly the connection.
But MacOS keyboard shortcuts have always been undiscoverable unless they were part of the menu, which is a problem.
userbinator 18 hours ago [-]
They certainly design --- to look good at first glance, but not necessarily be practical.
spdustin 18 hours ago [-]
⇧˖⌘˖. (Shift-Command-Period) will show/hide hidden files in Finder
timmytokyo 17 hours ago [-]
A shortcut that isn't visible in any of Finder's menus. Which makes it virtually undiscoverable.
Finder is full of these kinds of hidden secrets.
beAbU 8 hours ago [-]
MacOS spawned a whole cottage industry of paid software that make up for it's deficiencies.
raffraffraff 20 hours ago [-]
I'll take any file browser over finder. In fact, I hate the whole MacOS UI but I can mostly ignore the problems with Karabiner, Hammerspoon and Rectangle.
maltch 20 hours ago [-]
Explorer is a much better tool than Finder. Couldn't agree more.
api 14 hours ago [-]
I find Explorer slow and frustrating, while Finder works but is basic and cumbersome and useless for anything more than basic opening or moving.
I remember outstanding file managers way back in the MS-DOS days. Sidekick, QuickDOS, and Norton Commander were great.
My take is that expert users use the terminal while regular users don’t like to do much with files. So there’s no push for a powerful graphical file manager.
And yet copying multiple large files from or to the same disk grinds the throughput to a halt on Windows where Finder keeps up close to theoretical bandwidth in sum.
userbinator 18 hours ago [-]
That's not a UI issue.
api 14 hours ago [-]
Windows file I/O has always felt slower than Linux, Mac, anything. Still does. I don’t know what’s wrong with it or why it’s unfixable.
SSDs make it tolerable… not by fixing it but by being fast enough to hide it. Back in the spinning disc days you could tell a windows machine by how much kerchunking the drive was doing.
Suppafly 11 hours ago [-]
As a dos/windows/linux users my whole life, I got asked by some family a few years back to get photos off of a mac from a deceased family member. I pulled off everything I could find, but I was never sure I actually found everything because I basically had to just search for different image types, but had no real way to browse to actual folders where things were stored.
thrwkmmshf00083 6 hours ago [-]
It's a Unix system under the fancy UI. Of course there are folders and of course you can go to them. You can also grep in the terminal or whatever you are used to do from Linux to your heart's content.
Personally, I think the representation of the directory tree in Linux and MacOS is equally jarring for a person who has grown up with DOS and Windows. It certainly was for me when I peeked my head out of Bill-Gates-Land as a teenager.
Change to `false` to reverse it. You have to `killall Finder` or force quit it for each to take effect.
Also, Shift-Command-. (dot) in Finder. You can find a lot of useful settings that can be adjusted to your preferred mode digging through this repo (not affiliated): https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles
hirvi74 20 hours ago [-]
What do you mean by "see the file system?" It's not exactly hard to enable in Finder. In Finder's settings, one can have the root directory, home directory, etc. enabled in the sidebar. Not to mention, one can easily drag & drop common folders into the sidebar too.
Those settings with the hierarchy view makes seeing the file system quite clear in my opinion.
muppetman 19 hours ago [-]
So I’m in Microsoft Word. I hit the open file button and get the finder chooser window thing. I want to go up one level.
How??
I’m sure there’s some magical key combination to do it but I can never remember it.
That’s the first thing I can think off atop my head.
I’ve never played in Finder settings. Do I have to do that to get something useable? I didn’t even know it had settings it doesn’t seem like the sort of app that should.
blokey 19 hours ago [-]
Command + Uparrow.
In the Finder, look at the 'Go' menu, all those keyboard shortcuts works everywhere the file open/save window is displayed.
Like Command+Shift+D for Desktop, Command+Shift+O for Documents.
classichasclass 19 hours ago [-]
Click on the drop down at the top of the Open window (where the name of the current folder is displayed) and you get the whole path to choose from.
muppetman 19 hours ago [-]
Thank you!!
alsetmusic 19 hours ago [-]
This suggests that you were genuine in not knowing. But had you never done a quick web search? It's the kind of thing that I'd feel compelled to find whether I could change the behavior to fit what I would prefer.
Anyway, if you're unaware, here are a couple useful shortcuts for kbd-driven navigation: Command-Down (arrow) to dig one level down the file tree and Command-Up (arrow) to move to the enclosing directory / folder. I use it many times a day all day long.
muppetman 18 hours ago [-]
The problem I've been having is that in Word "Recents" is selected by default.
So I pull down that menu and it's useless (full of random Recent folders)
The comment above made me realise if I pick "Documents" in the left hand side, that top menu changes from having a bunch of useless "Recents" in it and exposes the filesystem.
No I've never thought to Google how to use the Finder - it seems like that one thing that should be super intutitve - I've never had to Google how to use any other filesystem manager, Windows or Linux. Or iOS. Or Android.
hotdog1492 2 hours ago [-]
“Recents” is not Finder. That’s actually Microsoft’s useleas UI. It would be far more usable if they did just open the real system file picker. (Msft messed this up on Windows too.)
anon7000 8 hours ago [-]
But this is like the same as windows explorer right? It opens whatever view you used for the app (say, “recents”) and then you click something in the sidebar to go to the “real” filesystem?
hn8726 18 hours ago [-]
I also didn't know how to do that, and I'm certain that I've looked it up at some point. It's just so unintuitive that I'd need to do it daily to remember
19 hours ago [-]
monkey_monkey 19 hours ago [-]
You right click on the folder name at the top of the window, this gives you the tree path from 'root'
scubbo 19 hours ago [-]
Not the person you're replying to, but I assume they're referring to the ability to see something like:
The entire MacOS UI has a 1990's OpenWindows feel. Yes, spacebar is neat, but the rest is dreadful.
haaz 20 hours ago [-]
Yes one of the first things I did when moving to mac was pinning Macintosh HDD root folder to Finder, but that kept going away every time I restarted my Max so I bought Bloom which is way better
Atariman 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, Bloom is really great and easily worth the price!
dkackman11 20 hours ago [-]
this
everyone 20 hours ago [-]
Imo tech companies want people to be as tech-illiterate as possible. Tech illiterate people will not realise how the tech company did extra work to make their product less capable and less empowering to the user in favour of being more beneficial and empowering to the tech company itself.
Obfuscating the file system has been a popular move in this regard. A file system is so elegant and empowering and useful for so many tasks, of course they want to hide it.
userbinator 18 hours ago [-]
A file system, especially a local one, invites interoperability and control over one's data. Hiding this from users makes it more difficult for them to have that control, and now they have to rely on the application vendor to do in a proprietary way, what would otherwise be a simple file operation.
Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 20 hours ago [-]
Finder is frustrating but this guy is just complaining about the fact that he's unable to organize his own files into directories in a way that lets him find them later. He then calls himself a power user. Finder even has tags to help with this, which is more than most operating systems get
gkoberger 20 hours ago [-]
I understand your point, but "Finder" does make it harder to organize things. When you save, they hide away folder browser by default, make it really difficult to navigate to different folders, and push for a "just hit save and search for it later!" mentality.
I agree you can overcome this, but you find yourself fighting against macOS a bit to do it.
(Also, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this isn't a blog post... it's an ad. So of course the issues are exaggerated a bit. The ironic part is I don't think the app actually solves the problems mentioned.)
re 19 hours ago [-]
I don't know where you get "really difficult" and "fighting against macOS" from. You only have to hit the disclosure arrow next to "Where" in the save dialog one time and it remembers it and shows it by default from then on. (Okay, maybe it's once per app? I don't remember for sure, but I can't remember the last time the save panel didn't show me the folder browser by default.)
gkoberger 19 hours ago [-]
If you read the article, it talks from the perspective of "I help lots of friends and family with IT stuff". For most users, they wouldn't know how to get to the larger menu or that Cmd+Shft+G lets them type in a path.
19 hours ago [-]
ShinyLeftPad 7 hours ago [-]
It's once forever, not once per app.
maltch 20 hours ago [-]
So true, so true. Every time I think I've got my structure set up properly, I then do something in haste, and can't find it later. Power user and file manager are two totally different things.
rbanffy 19 hours ago [-]
Not all data fits neatly into a hierarchy of boxes.
But, if the person doesn’t know where the file is, Finder has a “Recent” virtual folder right a the top that’ll list all files the person worked on most recent on the top. I often use it to get to screenshots. There’s also a lot of basic operations that are there since the 1990s any power user would know.
GiorgioG 20 hours ago [-]
He’s complaining…because he sells a solution to this problem. I hated Finder when I switched to Mac back in 2007. So much so I bought PathFinder. One thing that pissed me off and still does, is when I copy over a folder with the same name, it doesn’t merge the contents, it deletes everything in the existing folder. That’s not what I expected as a Windows user and it still seems like the wrong behavior almost 20 years later. I no longer use PathFinder, it had its own problems and bugs…but in general I find Finder pretty lacking.
ShinyLeftPad 7 hours ago [-]
This is not true, it asks to merge or replace (though merge is not always available). It's like that for years already.
zitterbewegung 20 hours ago [-]
If you do option while moving the file it merges both directories but even I didn't know this until I googled it.
Someone 20 hours ago [-]
If you copy-paste a folder using the keyboard, a dialog pops up asking you whether to merge the contents. Totally inconsistent with drag-and—drop, but useful to know.
imadtaieber 18 hours ago [-]
Finder sucks, information storing and retrieval should be frictionless
nothingnm 18 hours ago [-]
Pronouncing your name is like a drunk French guy saying "I'm outta beer"
greekrich92 20 hours ago [-]
Finder is terrible. Not sure why it's worth defending to the point of attacking someone who simpy made something which fills its gaps.
userbinator 20 hours ago [-]
Thinly veiled marketing post.
I've had to use Finder, and it's definitely frustrating in a "Think Different" sort of way, but this article doesn't actually mention why beyond vague statements.
Here's a concrete one: Enter enters rename mode.
mikestew 20 hours ago [-]
Here's a concrete one: Enter enters rename mode.
I can make the apologetics for just about anything in macOS. After over 20 years of using OS X/macOS, I still can't make the case for this one. Imagine a button has focus, you hit Enter, and it allows you to change the text on the button instead of executing the code behind button.click(). That behavior is just as dumb if a file has focus in Finder.
rufo 19 hours ago [-]
Because, as one of the original GUIs, when they conceived of how the Macintosh worked, you used the command keys to perform actions on files, and you could rename the file just by typing. Cmd-O was the shortcut for opening files, which makes sense for obvious reasons.
When they released the Macintosh to the world, Andy Hertzfeld realized that people were renaming items in the Finder by accident; so he added the "return" key (already used to confirm actions) as an "arming" step[1].
Now, one might ask: wouldn't that interrupt people navigating via the keyboard? No, because the original Macintosh didn't have arrow keys on the keyboard. This was an intentional choice—or, perhaps, mandate from Jobs—as a way to get users to use the mouse as their primary input device, and to force developers to create mouse-driven interfaces. With no arrow keys, no typeahead search implemented, and a clean slate for designing an interface, I'm guessing using Return to open a file wasn't a strong consideration at the time.
Why wasn't it changed? Because Mac OS X was made for Mac users, and we all have muscle memory dating back decades :P
I can't imagine editing text on a keyboard with no arrow keys to be any better than the horrible experience of doing it on a mobile device... which might be why Apple decided to add them quite early in the history of the Mac.
It's also ironic that despite justifying the menubar at the top of the screen as being easier to hit, they then totally missed the awkwardness of not being able to navigate with only one hand by using the arrow keys and the nearby return/enter. Watching someone experienced using Windows' file manager with only the keyboard is almost vi-like in its efficiency.
tpmoney 19 hours ago [-]
Aside from “it’s historically always done that”, I’d argue that because you use arrow keys to navigate around the finder (left, right, up, down to select, CMD-up to go up a directory, it only makes sense that CMD-down would open a directory (or file/application). And within that context it makes more sense than “enter”.
maltch 20 hours ago [-]
It's my app, no veil intended. It pulls all the drives, folders into one stream . So it doesn't matter where a file is located. Then it reads what is inside so you can type in what you remember.
lungeloslx 11 hours ago [-]
Each and every comment that is in agreement here is a bunch of former Windows users who wanted to move Explorer to Mac with them. I have used MacOS for over 15 years. Finder has never stood in my way. I don’t even know what “see the file system” means. Too many words to say “I don’t know how to organize my files on a computer but I consider myself a power user”
AlotOfReading 10 hours ago [-]
I don’t even know what “see the file system” means.
It just means they want to see the hierarchy that the filesystem exposes. Here's a useful diagram [0] from the Wikipedia page on hierarchial file systems [1]. There are ways to show paths and directory structure in finder, but you're fighting against the intended usage.
I don’t get how this is any easier in windows explorer. In both windows and Mac I can just pin the drive itself or just the root directory to the sidebar and then use list/grid/nested columns to pop in and out of the hierarchy however I want. In both Mac and windows, the default home folders (like “documents”) sort of hide the rest of the filesystem from you.
sparqlittlestar 6 hours ago [-]
I'm however so confused by Windows' top level of the hierarchy. Like the Desktop contains the computer which contains the Desktop, yet that one doesn't have the computer in it. And likewise for the bin, the Configuration Panel, yet not Settings, etc. etc.
Desktop > My Computer > C > Users > Me > Desktop
or perhaps even on my work laptop
Desktop > My Computer > C > Users > Me > OneDrive > Desktop
SwellJoe 20 hours ago [-]
My most recent laptop purchase was a Macbook Pro, because the price/performance is just so lopsided with the price of memory pushing everything up to Apple-like prices, it didn't make sense to buy an x86 laptop. But, coming from Linux it's a miserable user experience. I genuinely hate macOS. Every time I use it, I'm surprised by some weird thing about it, some limitation, some annoyance, some weird bug. Installing software is ridiculous. And, yes, Finder is weird for the sake of being weird.
I simply don't understand how Apple has the reputation it has.
raffraffraff 20 hours ago [-]
It's the hardware. Always the hardware. Best trackpad (ALL other trackpads are trash), best build and screen (since the first aluminium Macbook Pro retina) and right now, best silicon. But I also hate MacOS.
hn_throw2025 19 hours ago [-]
I went through similar feelings switching to the Mac ecosystem (from Linux) in 2012... But I quickly settled on some tools I wouldn't be without now.
Finder is terrible, but I switched for Forklift early on.
I think it's amazing, so much better than the Gnome and KDE file managers I used before. It covers so many bases, from being a twin-pane orthodox manager, directory comparer and synchroniser, bulk regex renamer, etc. Handles local directories as well as remote ones via SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Google Drive, SMB, NFS, etc.
And switching to Alfred was a real pleasure. I could see where Gnome Do took inspiration from, but it's a pale imitation.
I also installed iTerm2 early on, and I use it to this day. Easily the best fit terminal for my purposes.
nottorp 20 hours ago [-]
Maybe because you can open a terminal, do port install mc and then ignore the Finder most of the time :)
SwellJoe 19 hours ago [-]
I do most of my work in the terminal, so the Finder is less of an issue than it would be otherwise. I like for the desktop environment to be nice, but I don't necessarily need it for much more than managing the browser and terminal windows most of the time. But, the weird layout of the filesystem and more limited terminal environment on macOS is also uncomfortable. In some cases, it's merely different rather than worse, but the overall experience for me is notably less comfortable than Linux.
wrs 19 hours ago [-]
“Weird for the sake of being weird”…you know Finder existed first, right?
dTal 6 hours ago [-]
Not true by any stretch, though parent didn't mention any competitor
MacOS's current Finder dates from 2001. Earlier versions of "Finder" were a completely different piece of software - different code, different interface, different UI metaphor. File manager software predating it:
Windows Explorer
GNOME/Nautilus
KDE/Konqueror
X11/xfm (X File Manager)
sundry proprietary Unix workstations
All of the above interfaces share the same interface lineage as Mac OS, lying as they all do downstream of Xerox PARC. And all have converged on the same interface principles - visible path, a button to ascend to the parent directory, etc.
Everyone who comes to Finder from anywhere else complains. Finder is weird for the sake of being weird.
tonyedgecombe 3 hours ago [-]
MacOS's current Finder dates from 2001
Arguably it dates from NeXTSTEP so 1989.
19 hours ago [-]
ivankra 20 hours ago [-]
You know you can just use Linux on it. I work from a Linux VM in UTM as my main desktop whole day, with Mac OS just being a VM hypervisor for me, it's pretty good!
ed_mercer 13 hours ago [-]
Hi, can you elaborate on this? Why not use Asahi Linux?
ivankra 12 hours ago [-]
I'd love to try Asahi some day, but it only supports older hardware up to M3 for now and feature support is rather fragmented: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m3/. As it's a small and slow moving project, it'd also unfortunately mean living with all the bugs and quirks for a long time if you choose it.
What you could do instead is just set up your favorite Linux distro in an arm64 VM and run it with UTM (a popular qemu wrapper). Works nearly flawlessly! Very usable as a daily development setup. I connect it to an external monitor and keyboard and can't believe it's not a Linux box most of the day. They even got virtualized Vulkan (almost) working now. Switching between VMs and host is trivial and you have proper virgl acceleration in VMs without fighting a lot of nonsense like I had in the past with virt-manager on Linux hardware - if you like to develop in VMs like me, this alone would justify switching from a Linux box to a Mac.
Virtualization costs me ~10-15% in multicore performance - still a bargain considering how far ahead Mac hardware is compared to anything x86. Linux arm64 is very well supported by open source these days. Just proprietary software is often behind e.g. Zoom, Slack are still missing native binaries but you could run them in a browser.
Awesome write-up, thank you! This makes me want to try this out as well.
SwellJoe 12 hours ago [-]
I can't speak for the person you've asked, but, I have an M5 Macbook Pro and Asahi Linux only recently got support for M3 Macs, and that support is marked WIP on most features: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m3/
I assume it'll be a couple of years before Asahi is an option for my machine.
abacadaba 20 hours ago [-]
same. now that there are finally good linux laptops with good battery and haptic touchpads i'm having a bit of buyers remorse, and will probably pick one up soon.
such a waste of damn good hardware though
raffraffraff 20 hours ago [-]
Who currently makes a decent haptic trackpad? I have an Asus with gorgeous OLED screen, good battery life etc and fucking GARBAGE trackpad.
Suppafly 11 hours ago [-]
>My most recent laptop purchase was a Macbook Pro, because the price/performance is just so lopsided with the price of memory pushing everything up to Apple-like prices, it didn't make sense to buy an x86 laptop.
I see people justify their Mac purchases this way all the time, but IMO it's just cope and not their actual primary reason for making that decision. I've never seen where the math actually worked out where the price/performance actually made Apple made sense.
SwellJoe 9 hours ago [-]
Have you looked at the CPU performance of Apple Silicon lately?
eszed 20 hours ago [-]
Thanks for this. I'll give it a try, though I'm not someone who experiences much frustration with Finder, because I maintain a solid folder structure, and use Alfred (first) for virtually all file interactions.
The deciders for me, in case you're interested:
- Privacy. It doesn't look like you are trying to get my data. I'll be using network monitoring to verify.
- Automatically groups like files, regardless of file location. Yes, I know I can do this manually with tags, but I... don't.
- Polish. The screenshots make it look like a native interface. Bonus points if I can set it to hide until mouseover, like my dock bar.
I'm most curious about how it will function alongside Dropbox, particularly with cloud-stored files. I have several times my HDD in Dropbox (largely in folders shared with me); I know Keptor won't be able to read stub files, but if it greedily downloads and fills up my HDD it'll be an instant day-killer and uninstall. If it reads on-device files, and then stores a sparse representation so it can still present them in a list once they've been removed to the cloud it'll be great; I will manually sync and de-sync some folders to get them into the data. (If it incrementally syncs cloud files to my device, reads them, and then pushes them back up it'd be amazing, and I'll buy a lifetime license immediately - but I'm not sure those permissions exist.)
maltch 19 hours ago [-]
[dead]
arjie 20 hours ago [-]
In the end, it turns out for me that the classic explorer Tree View is the most intuitive. I know where things are as a sub-tree system. I get that hard links etc. complicate this and perhaps there are smart folders etc which do not fit this model well but I find I frequently want to “Go Up” in the hierarchy and this requires an uncomfortable shortcut on a Macbook (arrow key) or a menu button rather than a toolbar icon.
But these are complaints. The right answer is to see if I can build a file explorer for MacOS that behaves in the fashion I desire.
simondotau 14 hours ago [-]
Once I got used to column view, I miss it on other operating systems. I don't feel like there's anything I can't do with two Finder windows in column view. And for everything else there's the terminal.
arjie 12 hours ago [-]
For the main pane? I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect. I don't really mind Nautilus with the breadcrumbs on the top and columns in the main pane. But I think simply going up and down in a Finder window is quite hard unless you navigated there manually, but I'm usually in finder because of `open ~/Folder/Path` and so I end up manually going Cmd-G and typing my path in because it's too hard to navigate otherwise.
andrekandre 9 hours ago [-]
column view is the one saving grace of finder; the rest is best left untouched
cosmotic 12 hours ago [-]
I really like Finder. It's consistent, reliable, accessible, and predictable. There are easy ways to see the real file system and windows certainly doesn't do any better in this regard (see: libraries and other namespaces).
xnickb 20 hours ago [-]
Wow. I'm a Linux user and I have to use Mac for some work related tasks. I genuinely hate Finder and was going to lean back and enjoy reading this article.
This went into a direction I didn't expect at all.
jlund-molfese 20 hours ago [-]
Yeah, as someone whose favorite file manager is Dolphin, I have the opposite preferences of the author of the marketing post. I feel like Finder is overly-simplified and tries to abstract the directory structure away from the user too much.
davidee 20 hours ago [-]
Finder is indeed frustrating. "Recent" seems like an attempt to fix this without the need to use some giant camera roll?
The (hard) problem is that almost every finder alternative/add-on I've tried is someone else's ideal workflow that still doesn't sit well with me. I find KDE's Dolphin similarly frustrating - for very similar reasons.
Both work marginally better (for me) when used in concert with the quick-find tools like Alfred (or Spotlight) and KRunner. None of these are perfect.
Showerthought: maybe the "find files" interfaces aren't the worst offenders; maybe it's the "place files" workflows that are problematic and we're trying to solve the wrong problem?
bahmboo 20 hours ago [-]
If only recent actually worked. I see no rhyme or reason why something gets in recent. I guess finder has to be involved. So often I am working with files between apps, saving and opening and such and the files never appear in recent which defeats the purpose for me.
And then we have the spotlight deamon processes which seem to exist only to burn earth's precious resources.
But when it works it works great. ymmv
maltch 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
iamcalledrob 9 hours ago [-]
It's funny, as a 20+ year macOS user, I've really struggled with file managers that are not Finder.
I don't think it's that Finder is brilliant -- it just encourages a unique set of power user workflows that aren't replicated elsewhere.
For example, Open/Save panels that act as drop targets, and navigate to the dropped file's parent folder. I use this all the time, and it drives me nuts when I can't do this on Linux (Nautilus) and Windows. Enter to rename, too. These habits are very hard to break!
thrwkmmshf00083 6 hours ago [-]
You probably know this already but some don't (I certainly didn't for an embarrassingly long time): Rename is F2 in Windows and Linux (well, most distros File manager anyway).
antfarm 5 hours ago [-]
It works fine for me, I use the column view (unless I want to sort) and don't use groups (uncheck Edit > Use Groups). Back in the MacOS 7.5 days I had a system extension that gave me the column view I knew from my university's NeXT workstations. For more complex file operations, there is Terminal.
kqp 19 hours ago [-]
I’d like to propose a rule that all the Finder bashers in this thread accompany their complaint with at least one concrete example.
I’m no Apple fanboy, but blind hate is just as bad as blind love, and so far 100% of the specifics brought up have turned out to be people who just don’t have a basic familiarity with the software. I genuinely don’t begrudge a person sticking to what they know, but it’s a point towards what’s good for you and maybe whether it’s intuitive, not towards whether Finder is objectively good or lacks features. I’d be happy to read both real issues and people learning more about Finder, but just “Finder sucks” doesn’t help anybody.
chownie 6 hours ago [-]
The keybindings (and lack of documentation for them) in Finder sucks, having to google how to show hidden files in a save dialogue every time I have to do it sucks, having to search through the UI every time for the non-obvious way to get to a specific path sucks. Do I need to mention .DS_Store?
There are loads of different file managers for many different operating systems, they look and act the way they do from years of refining UX in response to the way users actually interact with them. This is why the file manager on my android phone is so similar to the one on my windows machine, and my linux install. All of them are different to Finder which appeared to lock some UX decisions in circa 1990 and then refuse to budge, this is why Finder sucks.
It's the one OS where file and folder manipulation via the terminal is actually sometimes faster for me, no need to go digging for the specific ritual Finder uses in opposition to every other file manager to do the task.
maltch 19 hours ago [-]
I think frustrating is the most appropriate word. Finder is great if my files are organized and I know exactly where something is. My concrete one... The save dialog opens where it was last, so files land in places I didn’t choose, and nothing in Finder or Spotlight helps me later unless I remember the name or the contents.
kqp 16 hours ago [-]
Thanks for something concrete.
In the open and save file dialogs, the location is a dropdown containing, amongst other things, recent locations, which would list where the file ended up. I think the number of recents is configurable in System Settings.
It should also show up in the Recents sidebar entry, though I don’t use it so I’m not sure.
The save dialog sidebar is configurable, I’ve put my “inbox” there.
I agree it would be better for this to be an option, but I think the status quo is more clicks, not nothing exists.
coffeesoda 20 hours ago [-]
I agree! I've been building this alternative file browser called 'Overlap' which uses Mac's tagging system. Mainly for images. It suggests tags based on Apple's photo classifier & similarity to your own tags. You can also explore data using a visual Venn Diagram.
https://github.com/cruxxxxxx/Overlap
By no means perfect but it's helping solve my moodboarding needs.
Sat_P 11 hours ago [-]
Since buying an M1 Mac at launch, I’ve always been able to find most things with Finder. Prior to that, I was a Windows user since school in the 1990s, and windows search was absolutely useless. So glad I moved to Mac.
mosura 20 hours ago [-]
The problem with Finder is historic. The classic Mac finder was a work of art, if you are the sort of person that arranges things spatially, but most programmers are not. Hence NeXT created something else which got merged back incoherently into what became OSX.
The Risc OS filer remains king, largely because managing windows on Risc OS is much more tolerable.
flyingshelf 20 hours ago [-]
You didn't read past the title.
mosura 20 hours ago [-]
You don’t understand words?
runxel 17 hours ago [-]
I don't get it. Finder is okay. Yes, there are some idiosyncracies, but once you got to know them (e.g. when coming over from Windows), it's smooth sailing - and much better than the Explorer.
Why is seemingly every single person on HN unhappy with the Finder?
notourproblem 16 hours ago [-]
> much better than the Explorer
In what ways?
Tags are nice. Can't think of anything else.
kalleboo 11 hours ago [-]
I'm only forced to use Windows occasionally but the things that always annoy me when I do are the lack of: Column View, QuickLook, spring-loaded folders, hierarchical view, calculate folder sizes in list view. The worst is how folders sort on top, so you can't just type the name of a file to jump down to it if there's a folder with a similar name. The whole tree view is so weird with how it treats folders as this special different thing.
I do not understand how people can get serious work done with Windows Explorer, but I presume that's just because I'm not used to it.
fl0id 20 hours ago [-]
So it's like fancy "last used" in finder?
simulator5g 10 hours ago [-]
The only real problem with Finder is that it doesn't show the current path anywhere. If it showed that, then it would be trivial to understand where to find your file later. Of course this is an option, hidden in a menu, so it is never used by the people who need it most.
2 hours ago [-]
mnky9800n 5 hours ago [-]
It also got rid of being able to right click and open in a new window. Tabs only. Whyyyyyy.
zuhsetaqi 2 hours ago [-]
Just hold Option and Open in new Tab switches to Open in new Window.
microflash 19 hours ago [-]
At this point, I've come to live with it. I do use Supercharge[1] to fix some of the warts.
> Computer folders are still organized in structures set up some 50 years ago. Operating systems change. Computers change. Search changes. But this has never changed. I can't change that.
And we've been using the Dewey Decimal System for like 150 years. Both are good systems. Kepter (a visual/gallery system) would break down when looking at more than a dozen files (or when files are very similar). I don't really think it's a good idea.
What we desperately need is a system-wide (or at least documents-wide) semantic/vector search, which is basically a weekend project and a $4.99 one-time purchase.
flyingshelf 20 hours ago [-]
I think you're gonna lose a lot of comments here to the "Finder" word here. The problem is not the Finder but directories, which exist on all operating systems.
With that aside, this is a great idea for most files. Of course my images are still in folders with the projects they belong to, but my life photos are in one stream. Files, contacts, a lot of data would benefit greatly from this visualization.
As for people with 1000 files on their desktop, who cares, they are as good as hoarders and they get what it comes to them. Discipline helps both in the real and in the digital world.
maltch 20 hours ago [-]
If you have the time to be focused on folder hierarchy and organization, great. Most of the people I help don't, and I built this for them. In building it, I learned that organizing files wastes much more time than you think. Finding files is all anyone actually needs.
flyingshelf 6 hours ago [-]
I don't disagree, but it depends. Some files just don't stand alone and are related to each other.
"Stream" photo libraries of people who take pictures for work know this issue all too well: there's a lot of junk mixed with their personal photos. What if we had... folders: one personal and one for work or per customer.
ivm 20 hours ago [-]
Surprised by the rest of the comments because I genuinely like Finder more than any other file manager I've used. I run it in column mode all the time. Space-to-QuickLook is also amazing.
stack_framer 20 hours ago [-]
This looks cool, but my least favorite things about Finder are not actually related to finding things. I prefer column mode, but:
1. When I right click, I can't create a new file of any kind. I can create a new folder—sometimes (see the next point).
2. If the folder is full, it's virtually impossible to right-click an empty spot to create a new folder. You have to scroll all the way to the top/bottom and right click the very narrow spot between the folder and the header/footer.
neilalexander 19 hours ago [-]
Regarding 2, use the File menu in the menubar.
Cockbrand 15 hours ago [-]
Or hit ⇧⌘N
ElijahLynn 20 hours ago [-]
Finder is one of the reasons I quit Mac. Main reason was that I had a knack for crashing it. And really not a fan of their marketing department not being completely in sync with their engineering department. Great marketing! But spent like five grand on a desktop Tower Mac and final cut Pro could not use all the cores. This was probably about 10-15 years ago.
marcelo-earth 20 hours ago [-]
Also Spotlight worked decently until a few years ago, but not anymore
Does anyone else experience this? Like it freezes when searching for programs?
saddat 7 hours ago [-]
I thought it was just me . Beside ITunes one of the worst user experience
rbanffy 19 hours ago [-]
If we are complaining about the impossibility of finding the files you touched in the past few days, what are your impressions of using Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) in conjunction with SharePoint and OneDrive? Oh… and don’t forget shared files in Teams channels.
bhaak 19 hours ago [-]
I expected people here to recommend several dual-pane file manager (aka orthodox file manager) as a replacement for Finder.
But I see not a single comment recommending one? No good UI ones on macOS?
kstrauser 13 hours ago [-]
Forklift.
Lots of people like QSpace, but I’ve bumped into weird privacy issues with it every time I considered trying it. Life’s too short to worry that my file manager is spying on me.
BatchJob 14 hours ago [-]
I rather enjoy Finder as a power user and software engineer who stopped using windows 20 years ago. Although I do have to use it for work occasionally. Windows explorer is nothing to crow about. Its definitely worst of breed. It misrepresents the file system more than any tool I have used and its a buggy disgusting piece of software that has 3 generations of windows trash still left in it that MS refuses to clean up.
Say what you want about Finder, but only a Windows devotee would dare put Explorer in a pile of anything to emulate. It is the worst of all possibilities and in that sense fits the host OS to a "T"
sdcfgy 20 hours ago [-]
Finder is fucking dire. I spend more time on the terminal.
The vertical column mode is useless as file names are always too long. It forces you to drag and drop and open loads of windows rather than cut and paste via menus. Open vs rename is fucked up. Half the machine is hidden initially. Hiding file extensions is just broken. Every view seems to forget what state it’s in. The file copying and continue copying thing fucks up network drives. cp is actually an order of magnitude faster. The icons at the top are shit. All the keyboard shortcuts require mutant hands that only emacs users have. The trash can semantics of “put back” are just crap. It crashes at least once a day for me. I could go on for days.
Windows 10 is notably better.
20 hours ago [-]
exhilaration 20 hours ago [-]
How do I fix search on OSX? I can never find anything, even when I do the name contains search.
arisAlexis 20 hours ago [-]
Recently switched to Mac and I always have this question mark like how can this be so bad after decades and why is everyone cool with it
carlosjobim 5 hours ago [-]
Finder is great if you use columns. Just click the button.
pjmlp 19 hours ago [-]
I see no reference to using Finder in 1990, and original flaws.
lapcat 19 hours ago [-]
This submission appears to be a self-promotional advertisement by the developer, who created a HN account literally an hour ago.
"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If anything, this should be a Show HN.
maltch 19 hours ago [-]
Fair, and I should have posted it as a Show HN. It's my app and my essay, and I said so in the thread as soon as it came up. New account because I've read here for years without commenting. Happy for a mod to relabel it.
bbg2401 19 hours ago [-]
At least respond to comments yourself.
berlinbrowndev 8 hours ago [-]
I do it because I cant find shit
"I discovered that his Desktop contained more than 1,000 files."
I finally go the hang of downloads and documents.
Finder doesnt find crap
gedy 20 hours ago [-]
Finder is really limited in many ways but it's one of the only FM that supports Miller columns, which I use quite a bit.
pcunite 20 hours ago [-]
Coming from Windows, what's outrageous about Finder, is that when I'm looking at a SMB share has is named the same as a local directory, it is very confusing as to which location is which. Scary. Like, show the full path! Not "Folder" at the top. Just crazy.
abacadaba 20 hours ago [-]
and dont even get me started on the missing backspace key..
taormina 20 hours ago [-]
HN hug of death.
maltch 19 hours ago [-]
Totally. Netlify bugged out for a few.
golemotron 19 hours ago [-]
It's so bad for me that I often drop down into Terminal, find there (with 'find') and then use 'open'. I'm very used to doing this.
I've just assumed that Finder is fine for non-technical user so no one complains. But fair point. It can be fixed.
VCFundedGenYer 15 hours ago [-]
Finder is missing so many basic features that explorer.exe and Linux file managers have had standard for decades.
Simple things like easily copying paths (and no, not with a weird keyboard shortcut nobody uses - a simple GUI method, preferably with an address bar, which Finder also lacks), copy queuing (pause queued copies rather than shotgun them all at once), cutting files (FFS why is this feature outright missing? There is an awkward keyboard shortcut to move a copied file but it's frankly not the same), broken views (icon view sends most files offscreen, and even maximizing doesn't bring them back into the confines of the window), idiotic keyboard shortcuts (Cmd O opens a file, Enter renames it? No other OS does this). I could go on and on.
Finder is a rare case in macOS where Windows actually outclasses it in every way.
simondotau 14 hours ago [-]
With respect, most of your complaints fall under the banner of "waaah, I'm used to the weird way Windows does things, so I don't like the weird way macOS does things."
A relatively universal aspect of macOS is that menu/context menu options can dynamically change as you hold down option. So for anyone vaguely familiar with the macOS operating system, it's easily found from a context-click or the edit menu while holding option.
If you're doing this more than once a week, it's command-option-C on Mac and control-shift-C on Windows. Learning this is as simple as any other keyboard shortcut.
Of course if you're just copying a path, chances are it's to paste into the terminal. There's an easier way. Just drag the file over the terminal.
thrwkmmshf00083 6 hours ago [-]
The feature is not missing. It is just not enabled by default because Apple hides away complexity (just like modern browsers don't show the link target you are hovering over anymore). Enable the path bar. It does what you want in regards to path copying.
ch_sm 20 hours ago [-]
unpopular opinion apparently, but i don‘t understand the finder hate. as a real-life, non-software-developer user, i couldn‘t care less about library folders, root folders, or a unix-tradition file system at all. i want my folders with my documents, pictures, etc. to me that‘s far more user-friendly and comprehensible than what explorer exposes to normal people.
krackers 16 hours ago [-]
I've never quite understood the hate either. But the way I see it is that it's not fundamentally inferior to explorer, but rather just has annoyances and warts that Apple has bizarrely not fixed for decades which makes tedious to use for anything other than casual browsing.
You can still navigate by path via cmd+shift+g (this works in the file picker too), but I feel like the popup animation used to be a lot quicker on older versions. You can customize views, but to get them to actually stick you have to use an arcane incantation (delete all existing ds_store, then go to view options menu and hit "make default").
You can cut-paste but you have to use cmd+c and cmd+option+v instead of cmd+x. There is an option to merge, it only appears under conditions: only when copy/pasting and only when "alt" is held in the dialog I think.
It also is really bad at browsing networked volumes, partly due to poor defaults as it tries to litter ds_store and generate thumbnails.
Opening a new tab always takes you back to the root directory instead of cloning your existing view. All of it is stuff that could be added in a simple point update rather than a ground-up rewrite.
StarlaAtNight 20 hours ago [-]
I’m now a full Mac user (personal + work), that came from Windows. Hate to say it, but Windows Explorer is better than Finder
20 hours ago [-]
hirvi74 20 hours ago [-]
I find this entire rant to be utterly ridiculous. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but I do not think there is anything wrong with Finder. It's honestly no worse than any other file manager that I have used. I much prefer Finder to any alternative I have tried.
I really enjoy the various keyboard shortcuts [1]. I honestly wish more file managers had some of these features. I probably use "shift+command+g" the most. It's so nice being able to jump through Finder like changing directories in the terminal.
Honestly, for more complex tasks, I actually just use the terminal anyway.
And unlike Windows, the obscure shortcuts are discoverable by holding the modifier key down while a menu is open.
hirvi74 13 hours ago [-]
I learn something new on this site everyday.
animanoir 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
iwontberude 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
LeBit 20 hours ago [-]
Water is wet.
Finder is by far the worst file manager ever created.
flyingshelf 20 hours ago [-]
You didn't read past the title.
BugsJustFindMe 20 hours ago [-]
Except for all the other ones.
hkpack 19 hours ago [-]
Computer files are very unintuitive concept for humans. That’s why iOS / ipadOS were trying so hard to get rid of files completely. Because any research shows that whatever your solution is - users don’t get it.
Professionals came up with their own ways navigating through that complexity.
Most people prefer the first solution there were introduced to. So people preferring Windows Explorer were using it before Finder and vice versa.
People also don’t spend time learning their tools - that’s why you see a lot of complains in this thread for things that are right in the menu, you don’t even need to read help or ask google, just open the damn menu. And this is HN - a forum for “power” users who spend immense time using their computers.
userbinator 18 hours ago [-]
Computer files are very unintuitive concept for humans.
That's just an excuse they give to justify the cycle of learned helplessness and control by Big Tech.
tpmoney 19 hours ago [-]
Apple has repeatedly over the years attempted to create interfaces where knowing where the actual data was saved was no necessary to using and finding that data. iTunes, iPhoto, most of iOS.
It’s usually met with a lot of resistance from people who have carefully and painstakingly crafted their perfect file hierarchies and hate it when Apple messes with that.
Some of the content recognition stuff in this seem pretty interesting, but I’m not sure that “everything in a single folder with preview thumbnails turned on” would be less “frustrating” for me than the current finder paradigm. This seems like it’s aiming for the iOS photos interface but for all of your files. In general I find searching for one specific photo in that interface to be more frustrating than knowing a hierarchy it would have been saved under. But for finding recent photos and finding a cluster of temporally related photos it is better. Is that a paradigm that works for all files too? For recents probably, but I’m not sure I often look for temporally related files. Still, this is a neat looking program/project, and like I said the content recognition stuff does seem interesting.
maltch 19 hours ago [-]
Time is merely the default order. You can also sort by what the document says. The amount. The date printed on it. Who it's from. So a receipt search isn't "when did I save this" it is "the $1200 one from March." That's what makes it work beyond photos, where all you have is time and place.
Windows was bad but at least Explorer (windows 10 version anyway) let you easily SEE the file system
I’m sure as hell not buying a subscription project to fix that though lololol
I honestly think it is a matter of what you like rather than what is good or bad.
Simple to use until you need it to be complicated, then it probably does what you’re looking for.
Not just Dolphin is among the best in class.
One of the things I find most baffling is that in order to "go to a folder by path" (e.g. ~) you have to hit command-shift-G ? What kind of hidden witchcraft is this?
It feels like it was designed for people who cannot understand a directory structure. But even that is done poorly, because it's not particularly useful. That said, this kepter thing looks pretty bad too.
What key combo did you want that would be less 'magical'?
I also want this to be able to copy a file’s path. Right now I’m not even sure how to do that aside from cmd-i to get info and then clunkily drag select the parent dir to copy. Repeat for the file name. Am I insane or is there a better way? Just use terminal? For a time I used pathfinder which had a feature to copy the full path but I ended up hating the subscription and constant feature churn.
Not a fan of Apples approach of making many functions invisible but I never understood all the complaints about Finder. I use Arch, MacOS and Windows (if I have to) and apart from having to reconfigure it slightly, I never had any particular issues with Finder. You also have to give Apple credit for their long-form manuals - which exist for most things they offer. It's pretty easy to see in threads like this one that many people apparently do not read them, though.
For copying the path of a file specifically, in Finder you can hold Option and then pick Edit → Copy as Pathname.
Look at Apple Mail, they used to bury attachments behind a button and even now they just drop them at the end of the email.
So it's wrong to be power user using mac.
Same reason the Church didn't want to translate the Bible into the vernacular. If you can read the Bible you don't need a priest, or at the least you can evaluate your priest knowledgeably and decide to go to a different one.
One of the biggest pitfalls I ran into at the time (and remember from the top of my head) was that when you copy a folder, and a folder with the same name already exists at the destination, it will quietly replace it, rather than giving me a dialog asking if I want to Replace or Merge.
Oh, that I can't switch on/off show hidden files, I have to run some command line command to do that...
You can also hold Option while stopping a folder to get an additional Merge button, but at least one folder needs to have unique items.
But MacOS keyboard shortcuts have always been undiscoverable unless they were part of the menu, which is a problem.
Finder is full of these kinds of hidden secrets.
I remember outstanding file managers way back in the MS-DOS days. Sidekick, QuickDOS, and Norton Commander were great.
My take is that expert users use the terminal while regular users don’t like to do much with files. So there’s no push for a powerful graphical file manager.
SSDs make it tolerable… not by fixing it but by being fast enough to hide it. Back in the spinning disc days you could tell a windows machine by how much kerchunking the drive was doing.
Personally, I think the representation of the directory tree in Linux and MacOS is equally jarring for a person who has grown up with DOS and Windows. It certainly was for me when I peeked my head out of Bill-Gates-Land as a teenager.
> defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true
Change to `false` to reverse it. You have to `killall Finder` or force quit it for each to take effect.
Also, Shift-Command-. (dot) in Finder. You can find a lot of useful settings that can be adjusted to your preferred mode digging through this repo (not affiliated): https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles
Those settings with the hierarchy view makes seeing the file system quite clear in my opinion.
How??
I’m sure there’s some magical key combination to do it but I can never remember it.
That’s the first thing I can think off atop my head.
I’ve never played in Finder settings. Do I have to do that to get something useable? I didn’t even know it had settings it doesn’t seem like the sort of app that should.
In the Finder, look at the 'Go' menu, all those keyboard shortcuts works everywhere the file open/save window is displayed.
Like Command+Shift+D for Desktop, Command+Shift+O for Documents.
Anyway, if you're unaware, here are a couple useful shortcuts for kbd-driven navigation: Command-Down (arrow) to dig one level down the file tree and Command-Up (arrow) to move to the enclosing directory / folder. I use it many times a day all day long.
No I've never thought to Google how to use the Finder - it seems like that one thing that should be super intutitve - I've never had to Google how to use any other filesystem manager, Windows or Linux. Or iOS. Or Android.
``` src ├── app │ └── page.tsx └── components └── header.tsx ```
EDIT: Lol. I'm not even going to edit it. Hacker News, you also suck.
FWIW, this is clear in the "help" link by the textarea.
https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mchldaafb302/...
Obfuscating the file system has been a popular move in this regard. A file system is so elegant and empowering and useful for so many tasks, of course they want to hide it.
I agree you can overcome this, but you find yourself fighting against macOS a bit to do it.
(Also, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this isn't a blog post... it's an ad. So of course the issues are exaggerated a bit. The ironic part is I don't think the app actually solves the problems mentioned.)
But, if the person doesn’t know where the file is, Finder has a “Recent” virtual folder right a the top that’ll list all files the person worked on most recent on the top. I often use it to get to screenshots. There’s also a lot of basic operations that are there since the 1990s any power user would know.
I've had to use Finder, and it's definitely frustrating in a "Think Different" sort of way, but this article doesn't actually mention why beyond vague statements.
Here's a concrete one: Enter enters rename mode.
I can make the apologetics for just about anything in macOS. After over 20 years of using OS X/macOS, I still can't make the case for this one. Imagine a button has focus, you hit Enter, and it allows you to change the text on the button instead of executing the code behind button.click(). That behavior is just as dumb if a file has focus in Finder.
When they released the Macintosh to the world, Andy Hertzfeld realized that people were renaming items in the Finder by accident; so he added the "return" key (already used to confirm actions) as an "arming" step[1].
Now, one might ask: wouldn't that interrupt people navigating via the keyboard? No, because the original Macintosh didn't have arrow keys on the keyboard. This was an intentional choice—or, perhaps, mandate from Jobs—as a way to get users to use the mouse as their primary input device, and to force developers to create mouse-driven interfaces. With no arrow keys, no typeahead search implemented, and a clean slate for designing an interface, I'm guessing using Return to open a file wasn't a strong consideration at the time.
Why wasn't it changed? Because Mac OS X was made for Mac users, and we all have muscle memory dating back decades :P
[1]: https://www.folklore.org/A_Floppy_named_lsadkfjalhkjh.html
However, the very next keyboard they designed did have them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Macintosh_Plus_Exte...
I can't imagine editing text on a keyboard with no arrow keys to be any better than the horrible experience of doing it on a mobile device... which might be why Apple decided to add them quite early in the history of the Mac.
It's also ironic that despite justifying the menubar at the top of the screen as being easier to hit, they then totally missed the awkwardness of not being able to navigate with only one hand by using the arrow keys and the nearby return/enter. Watching someone experienced using Windows' file manager with only the keyboard is almost vi-like in its efficiency.
[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Fi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_file_system
I simply don't understand how Apple has the reputation it has.
Finder is terrible, but I switched for Forklift early on. I think it's amazing, so much better than the Gnome and KDE file managers I used before. It covers so many bases, from being a twin-pane orthodox manager, directory comparer and synchroniser, bulk regex renamer, etc. Handles local directories as well as remote ones via SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Google Drive, SMB, NFS, etc. And switching to Alfred was a real pleasure. I could see where Gnome Do took inspiration from, but it's a pale imitation. I also installed iTerm2 early on, and I use it to this day. Easily the best fit terminal for my purposes.
MacOS's current Finder dates from 2001. Earlier versions of "Finder" were a completely different piece of software - different code, different interface, different UI metaphor. File manager software predating it:
All of the above interfaces share the same interface lineage as Mac OS, lying as they all do downstream of Xerox PARC. And all have converged on the same interface principles - visible path, a button to ascend to the parent directory, etc.Everyone who comes to Finder from anywhere else complains. Finder is weird for the sake of being weird.
Arguably it dates from NeXTSTEP so 1989.
What you could do instead is just set up your favorite Linux distro in an arm64 VM and run it with UTM (a popular qemu wrapper). Works nearly flawlessly! Very usable as a daily development setup. I connect it to an external monitor and keyboard and can't believe it's not a Linux box most of the day. They even got virtualized Vulkan (almost) working now. Switching between VMs and host is trivial and you have proper virgl acceleration in VMs without fighting a lot of nonsense like I had in the past with virt-manager on Linux hardware - if you like to develop in VMs like me, this alone would justify switching from a Linux box to a Mac.
Virtualization costs me ~10-15% in multicore performance - still a bargain considering how far ahead Mac hardware is compared to anything x86. Linux arm64 is very well supported by open source these days. Just proprietary software is often behind e.g. Zoom, Slack are still missing native binaries but you could run them in a browser.
Here's a more detailed experience report (though a bit dated) from another user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42541508 https://blog.disintegrator.dev/posts/dev-virtual-machine/
I assume it'll be a couple of years before Asahi is an option for my machine.
such a waste of damn good hardware though
I see people justify their Mac purchases this way all the time, but IMO it's just cope and not their actual primary reason for making that decision. I've never seen where the math actually worked out where the price/performance actually made Apple made sense.
The deciders for me, in case you're interested:
- Privacy. It doesn't look like you are trying to get my data. I'll be using network monitoring to verify.
- Automatically groups like files, regardless of file location. Yes, I know I can do this manually with tags, but I... don't.
- Polish. The screenshots make it look like a native interface. Bonus points if I can set it to hide until mouseover, like my dock bar.
I'm most curious about how it will function alongside Dropbox, particularly with cloud-stored files. I have several times my HDD in Dropbox (largely in folders shared with me); I know Keptor won't be able to read stub files, but if it greedily downloads and fills up my HDD it'll be an instant day-killer and uninstall. If it reads on-device files, and then stores a sparse representation so it can still present them in a list once they've been removed to the cloud it'll be great; I will manually sync and de-sync some folders to get them into the data. (If it incrementally syncs cloud files to my device, reads them, and then pushes them back up it'd be amazing, and I'll buy a lifetime license immediately - but I'm not sure those permissions exist.)
But these are complaints. The right answer is to see if I can build a file explorer for MacOS that behaves in the fashion I desire.
This went into a direction I didn't expect at all.
The (hard) problem is that almost every finder alternative/add-on I've tried is someone else's ideal workflow that still doesn't sit well with me. I find KDE's Dolphin similarly frustrating - for very similar reasons.
Both work marginally better (for me) when used in concert with the quick-find tools like Alfred (or Spotlight) and KRunner. None of these are perfect.
Showerthought: maybe the "find files" interfaces aren't the worst offenders; maybe it's the "place files" workflows that are problematic and we're trying to solve the wrong problem?
And then we have the spotlight deamon processes which seem to exist only to burn earth's precious resources.
But when it works it works great. ymmv
I don't think it's that Finder is brilliant -- it just encourages a unique set of power user workflows that aren't replicated elsewhere.
For example, Open/Save panels that act as drop targets, and navigate to the dropped file's parent folder. I use this all the time, and it drives me nuts when I can't do this on Linux (Nautilus) and Windows. Enter to rename, too. These habits are very hard to break!
I’m no Apple fanboy, but blind hate is just as bad as blind love, and so far 100% of the specifics brought up have turned out to be people who just don’t have a basic familiarity with the software. I genuinely don’t begrudge a person sticking to what they know, but it’s a point towards what’s good for you and maybe whether it’s intuitive, not towards whether Finder is objectively good or lacks features. I’d be happy to read both real issues and people learning more about Finder, but just “Finder sucks” doesn’t help anybody.
There are loads of different file managers for many different operating systems, they look and act the way they do from years of refining UX in response to the way users actually interact with them. This is why the file manager on my android phone is so similar to the one on my windows machine, and my linux install. All of them are different to Finder which appeared to lock some UX decisions in circa 1990 and then refuse to budge, this is why Finder sucks.
It's the one OS where file and folder manipulation via the terminal is actually sometimes faster for me, no need to go digging for the specific ritual Finder uses in opposition to every other file manager to do the task.
In the open and save file dialogs, the location is a dropdown containing, amongst other things, recent locations, which would list where the file ended up. I think the number of recents is configurable in System Settings.
It should also show up in the Recents sidebar entry, though I don’t use it so I’m not sure.
The save dialog sidebar is configurable, I’ve put my “inbox” there.
I agree it would be better for this to be an option, but I think the status quo is more clicks, not nothing exists.
By no means perfect but it's helping solve my moodboarding needs.
The Risc OS filer remains king, largely because managing windows on Risc OS is much more tolerable.
Why is seemingly every single person on HN unhappy with the Finder?
In what ways?
Tags are nice. Can't think of anything else.
I do not understand how people can get serious work done with Windows Explorer, but I presume that's just because I'm not used to it.
[1]: https://sindresorhus.com/supercharge
And we've been using the Dewey Decimal System for like 150 years. Both are good systems. Kepter (a visual/gallery system) would break down when looking at more than a dozen files (or when files are very similar). I don't really think it's a good idea.
What we desperately need is a system-wide (or at least documents-wide) semantic/vector search, which is basically a weekend project and a $4.99 one-time purchase.
With that aside, this is a great idea for most files. Of course my images are still in folders with the projects they belong to, but my life photos are in one stream. Files, contacts, a lot of data would benefit greatly from this visualization.
As for people with 1000 files on their desktop, who cares, they are as good as hoarders and they get what it comes to them. Discipline helps both in the real and in the digital world.
"Stream" photo libraries of people who take pictures for work know this issue all too well: there's a lot of junk mixed with their personal photos. What if we had... folders: one personal and one for work or per customer.
1. When I right click, I can't create a new file of any kind. I can create a new folder—sometimes (see the next point).
2. If the folder is full, it's virtually impossible to right-click an empty spot to create a new folder. You have to scroll all the way to the top/bottom and right click the very narrow spot between the folder and the header/footer.
Does anyone else experience this? Like it freezes when searching for programs?
But I see not a single comment recommending one? No good UI ones on macOS?
Lots of people like QSpace, but I’ve bumped into weird privacy issues with it every time I considered trying it. Life’s too short to worry that my file manager is spying on me.
Say what you want about Finder, but only a Windows devotee would dare put Explorer in a pile of anything to emulate. It is the worst of all possibilities and in that sense fits the host OS to a "T"
The vertical column mode is useless as file names are always too long. It forces you to drag and drop and open loads of windows rather than cut and paste via menus. Open vs rename is fucked up. Half the machine is hidden initially. Hiding file extensions is just broken. Every view seems to forget what state it’s in. The file copying and continue copying thing fucks up network drives. cp is actually an order of magnitude faster. The icons at the top are shit. All the keyboard shortcuts require mutant hands that only emacs users have. The trash can semantics of “put back” are just crap. It crashes at least once a day for me. I could go on for days.
Windows 10 is notably better.
"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If anything, this should be a Show HN.
"I discovered that his Desktop contained more than 1,000 files."
I finally go the hang of downloads and documents.
Finder doesnt find crap
I've just assumed that Finder is fine for non-technical user so no one complains. But fair point. It can be fixed.
Simple things like easily copying paths (and no, not with a weird keyboard shortcut nobody uses - a simple GUI method, preferably with an address bar, which Finder also lacks), copy queuing (pause queued copies rather than shotgun them all at once), cutting files (FFS why is this feature outright missing? There is an awkward keyboard shortcut to move a copied file but it's frankly not the same), broken views (icon view sends most files offscreen, and even maximizing doesn't bring them back into the confines of the window), idiotic keyboard shortcuts (Cmd O opens a file, Enter renames it? No other OS does this). I could go on and on.
Finder is a rare case in macOS where Windows actually outclasses it in every way.
A relatively universal aspect of macOS is that menu/context menu options can dynamically change as you hold down option. So for anyone vaguely familiar with the macOS operating system, it's easily found from a context-click or the edit menu while holding option.
If you're doing this more than once a week, it's command-option-C on Mac and control-shift-C on Windows. Learning this is as simple as any other keyboard shortcut.
Of course if you're just copying a path, chances are it's to paste into the terminal. There's an easier way. Just drag the file over the terminal.
You can still navigate by path via cmd+shift+g (this works in the file picker too), but I feel like the popup animation used to be a lot quicker on older versions. You can customize views, but to get them to actually stick you have to use an arcane incantation (delete all existing ds_store, then go to view options menu and hit "make default").
You can cut-paste but you have to use cmd+c and cmd+option+v instead of cmd+x. There is an option to merge, it only appears under conditions: only when copy/pasting and only when "alt" is held in the dialog I think.
It also is really bad at browsing networked volumes, partly due to poor defaults as it tries to litter ds_store and generate thumbnails.
Opening a new tab always takes you back to the root directory instead of cloning your existing view. All of it is stuff that could be added in a simple point update rather than a ground-up rewrite.
I really enjoy the various keyboard shortcuts [1]. I honestly wish more file managers had some of these features. I probably use "shift+command+g" the most. It's so nice being able to jump through Finder like changing directories in the terminal.
Honestly, for more complex tasks, I actually just use the terminal anyway.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102650
Finder is by far the worst file manager ever created.
Professionals came up with their own ways navigating through that complexity.
Most people prefer the first solution there were introduced to. So people preferring Windows Explorer were using it before Finder and vice versa.
People also don’t spend time learning their tools - that’s why you see a lot of complains in this thread for things that are right in the menu, you don’t even need to read help or ask google, just open the damn menu. And this is HN - a forum for “power” users who spend immense time using their computers.
That's just an excuse they give to justify the cycle of learned helplessness and control by Big Tech.
It’s usually met with a lot of resistance from people who have carefully and painstakingly crafted their perfect file hierarchies and hate it when Apple messes with that.
Some of the content recognition stuff in this seem pretty interesting, but I’m not sure that “everything in a single folder with preview thumbnails turned on” would be less “frustrating” for me than the current finder paradigm. This seems like it’s aiming for the iOS photos interface but for all of your files. In general I find searching for one specific photo in that interface to be more frustrating than knowing a hierarchy it would have been saved under. But for finding recent photos and finding a cluster of temporally related photos it is better. Is that a paradigm that works for all files too? For recents probably, but I’m not sure I often look for temporally related files. Still, this is a neat looking program/project, and like I said the content recognition stuff does seem interesting.