Finder remains one of those apps I still can’t make effective use of. Windows File Explorer for all its warts and changes still “just makes sense” to my brain vs how finder lays things out and expects you to browse.
I’ve long since moved to
command line or dual pane explorers but it’s something that makes me pause every time I do find myself in Finder for some reason.
I wholly agree with you on this one. Windows has its fair share of issues, but Windows Explorer feels like peak file browsing to me.
For MacOS I can recommend Forklift [0]. I've been using it for years and it is a bit closer to the Windows Explorer way of doing things. Does what it is meant to do. Affordable. No nags. Gets out of the way. Not perfect, but soooo much better than the horrific experience that is Finder.
I have a paid Forklift 3, and it’s nagging me to upgrade and pay for next version.
I mostly went back to Finder for now, as I remember having some kind of issues with Forklift3 not being performant, though I don’t remember the details.
It seems fine to me. To be honest I don't recall what actually changed from v3.
That said I only work on local files and don't use any of the remote workflows. The most advanced feature I use is synchronising files between local storage and SD card. And that works fine.
One thing that did break in v4 is that search doesn't work anymore when using the text only toolbar. I reported that ~10 months ago but it's still broken. Maybe I'm the only person who was actually using it.
I never quite understand why the Finder gets so much hate. Personally I think it’s quite ok. I especially like columns navigation, quite effective for me to get around.
It does make me wonder though, how do you feel about System 7.0 Finder?
I have similar feelings about the Finder and also don't quite get the love for Windows Explorer. It's just ok and if it were practical to replace it with just about any common Linux file manager on my Windows boxes I'd do so without a second thought.
NeXT/Mac column view are great and should be table stakes in a file manager in my opinion.
Finder used to be a lot worse, with tabs and once you've got all the shortcuts down it's not too bad. Spring loaded folders are really handy. Some time around 10.10 they added a shortcut for showing invisible files, which is absolutely essential for any developer. If I had to pick one area to improve, besides the ds_store littering it'd be general network file system support, SMB has always been a second class citizen and even AFP is just slow.
Command + O to open files/folders in Finder was a bit challenging to remember since Enter/Return just works in Explorer
...and in Finder, Enter is rename, which is a lot more puzzling, so much that many others have commented on the same and some even tried to justify it:
Arrow keys are where it’s at. Command up to go up one level, command down to go down one level (open). Always felt like I had to move my hands more on Windows.
Oh boy, Windows does the same thing (regarding hidden files to sort out FS stuff), but they hide it (just like Apple). We WSL2 users found out the hard way and Microsoft refuses to offer a solution. Relevant issue: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/7456
Apologies for my post getting snipped, The latest iOS beta keeps randomly eating my text. Apple is aware.
Unless im misunderstanding something, these files don't actually exist but reside in the NTFS's alternative data stream, and only display separately in WSL due to ext4 not supporting ADS right?
Which is annoying as I liked the NeXT file Manager.
Agreed on Dual Pane file managers though. I used them on Windows from Windows 3 onwards and various macOS ones except the writers of the macOS ones had nice early versions then decided to rewrite to provide memory hogs that stopped working - e.g. Cocoatech Pathfinder - It is simple just a file browser don't keep adding stuff.
I’ve long since moved to command line or dual pane explorers but it’s something that makes me pause every time I do find myself in Finder for some reason.