Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 12:49 PM UTC

pan69 wrote: post #91

muppetman wrote: post #28

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

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 Merg…

Post by hotdog1492 » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

muppetman wrote: post #114

alsetmusic wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 /…

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 s…

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

simulator5g wrote: post #150

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.

Post by x2tyfi » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

Wevah wrote: post #109

etrautmann wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Context menu → hold Option; “Copy” will change to “Copy 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.)

Post by hyperjeff » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #102

rufo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "retu…

because the original Macintosh didn't have arrow keys on the keyboard. 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…