The Best Finder Settings to Change on a Mac

Finder is the app you use most and configure least. Its defaults hide extensions, search your entire Mac when you meant this folder, and scatter folders among files. Ten minutes here changes how the machine feels for years, and every one of these is reversible.

The four in Finder Settings → Advanced

Press Command-Comma with Finder in front, then open Advanced. Four checkboxes matter:

1. Show all filename extensions. You can see what a file actually is. Also stops a file named invoice.pdf.app looking like a PDF.
2. Keep folders on top when sorting by name. Folders group together instead of being sorted alphabetically among files.
3. When performing a search → Search the Current Folder. The default searches your whole Mac, which is why Finder search feels useless.
4. Remove items from the Trash after 30 days, if you would rather not think about it. Optional, and genuinely useful on a small SSD.

While you are there, the Sidebar tab is worth a pass: turn on your home folder, which Apple hides by default, and turn off any of the tag entries or iCloud items you never click.

The two in the View menu

• Show Path Bar. A breadcrumb at the bottom of the window showing the full path. You can drag files onto any folder in it to move them there.
• Show Status Bar. Item count and free space, permanently visible. It is the fastest disk-space check on the Mac.

Set a default view and make it stick

Finder remembers a view per folder, which is why the setting appears not to work. Set the view you want, then apply it everywhere:

1. Open any folder and choose the view you want, usually List or Column.
2. Open View → Show View Options, or press Command-J.
3. Set sorting and column widths as you like them.
4. Click Use as Defaults at the bottom.

That covers folders Finder has not seen before. Folders you have already customised keep their own setting, which is normally what you want.

The settings with no checkbox

Three genuinely useful Finder behaviours have no interface at all.

# show the full POSIX path in the window title
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true

# allow quitting Finder with Command-Q
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool true

# stop macOS writing .DS_Store files to network shares
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true

killall Finder

Undo any of them with defaults delete on the same key, followed by killall Finder. The network one is the most valuable in an office: it stops your Mac littering shared drives with hidden files that annoy everyone else on them.

Column view, and why it beats list view

Finder has four views and most people stay in whichever one they landed in. Column view, Command-3, is the one worth trying deliberately. It shows the path you took to get here as a series of columns, so you always know where you are, and the rightmost column previews the selected file with its size, dimensions and dates.

It is particularly good for deep folder structures, because moving up a level is a left-arrow press rather than a click on a back button. Set it as the default for new folders in View → Show View Options → Use as Defaults, or with:

# Nlsv = list, clmv = column, icnv = icon, Flwv = gallery
defaults write com.apple.finder FXPreferredViewStyle -string "clmv" && killall Finder

# back to the macOS default
defaults delete com.apple.finder FXPreferredViewStyle && killall Finder

Two habits worth more than any setting

Learn the sidebar drag. Drag any folder to the Finder sidebar and it stays there. Three project folders in the sidebar beat any amount of navigation.

Use Command-Shift-G. Type a path directly, from anywhere in Finder, including open and save dialogs. Combined with showing hidden files it is how you reach ~/Library and other places macOS keeps out of sight.

Next

If you work with hidden files often, showing hidden files in Finder is the natural next setting, and it has a keyboard shortcut most people never learn.