Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one

fl0id

So it's like fancy "last used" in finder?

LeBit

Water is wet. Finder is by far the worst file manager ever created.

davidee

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?

Lt_Riza_Hawkeye

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

userbinator

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 .

arjie

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.

mosura

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

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.

arisAlexis

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

xnickb

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.

marcelo-earth

Also Spotlight worked decently until a few years ago, but not anymore Does anyone else experience this? Like it freezes when searching for programs?

exhilaration

How do I fix search on OSX? I can never find anything, even when I do the name contains search.

SwellJoe

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.

ivm

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.

StarlaAtNight

I’m now a full Mac user (personal + work), that came from Windows. Hate to say it, but Windows Explorer is better than Finder

muppetman

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

pcunite

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.

stack_framer

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.

sdcfgy

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.

gedy

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.