Set Default Finder View Options for Every Folder

You set your Downloads folder to list view sorted by date, open another folder, and you are back to giant icons in a random order. Finder remembers view settings per folder, which is powerful but means fixing things one folder at a time — unless you use the Use as Defaults button, which most people never notice.

Set your defaults once

1. Open any folder and put it in the view you want as your standard — Cmd+1 for icons, Cmd+2 for list, Cmd+3 for columns, Cmd+4 for gallery.
2. Press Cmd+J (or choose View → Show View Options).
3. Adjust everything to taste: Sort By, icon size, grid spacing, text size, and in list view the columns you want shown (Date Modified, Size, Kind…) plus Calculate all sizes if you want real folder sizes.
4. Click Use as Defaults at the bottom of the panel.

From now on, folders you have never customized open with these settings. On Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia the panel is identical.

Each view keeps its own defaults

The part that trips everyone up: defaults are per view, not global. Clicking Use as Defaults while in list view sets the default for list view only; icon view has its own separate defaults, saved the same way. Column view is the odd one out — its View Options apply to all column-view windows automatically, so the panel has no Use as Defaults button there.

Also note there is no master switch that forces every folder to open in one view. The checkbox at the top of View Options — Always open in list view (wording matches the current view) — pins that one folder to that view. Finder otherwise opens folders in the view they last used, falling back to your defaults for fresh folders.

Clear per-folder overrides

Any folder you manually tweaked in the past keeps its own settings and ignores your new defaults. Finder stores those overrides in a hidden .DS_Store file inside each folder. Delete the file and the folder falls back to your defaults the next time it opens:

# preview which folders under Documents have overrides
find ~/Documents -name .DS_Store

# delete them so those folders use your new defaults
find ~/Documents -name .DS_Store -delete

# then relaunch Finder
killall Finder

Fair warning: .DS_Store also stores window size, scroll position, and manual icon positions, so deleting it resets those too. There is no direct undo — the file is simply recreated with fresh settings as you browse — so run it on a specific folder tree rather than your whole home directory if you have carefully arranged icon layouts anywhere.

Do the desktop separately

The desktop is a folder too, with its own View Options: click the desktop, press Cmd+J, and set icon size, grid spacing, label position, and Sort By (choose Snap to Grid to stop icons overlapping). Desktop settings are independent of your folder defaults and there is no Use as Defaults button there — the desktop is one of a kind.

While you are in the panel

Two list-view options worth enabling before you hit Use as Defaults: Calculate all sizes, covered in our folder sizes guide, and a wider Date Modified column so dates never truncate. Set them once and every folder inherits them.