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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
By no means perfect but it's helping solve my moodboarding needs.
I simply don't understand how Apple has the reputation it has.
such a waste of damn good hardware though
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.)
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.
This went into a direction I didn't expect at all.
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.
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.
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
The Risc OS filer remains king, largely because managing windows on Risc OS is much more tolerable.
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.
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.
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.
Does anyone else experience this? Like it freezes when searching for programs?
Finder is by far the worst file manager ever created.