5 Reasons Finder List View Is The Best

You have four choices when it comes to Finder views. List View, however, has several advantages which make it my go-to Finder view.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you why I think a Finder List View is the best Finder view. 
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Now when viewing files in the Finder you have the choice between four different views. You could be using Icon View, List View, Column View, or Gallery View. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. For years I really though Column View was the best. But in the last few years I've changed my opinion. I think List View is actually the best. Let me tell you why.
First, it's the only view where you can see all of your files, if you want, in one list. You don't have to have multiple windows open. You don't have to settle for looking at the contents of one folder at a time. So here in List View I can open up this folder here to see what is inside it. I can open up a subfolder and see what is inside that and a subfolder of that. I can go down here and at the same time open up another folder at the same level. Notice I'm looking at files here in the Files Folder as well as files here in the Business Folder all in one view. By the way, this little thing here to the left that looks like an arrow or triangle is called the Disclosure Triangle. It also has many other names like the Expansion Triangle, the Expand/Collapse Triangle, the Expander, the Disclosure Widget. All sorts of different things. It actually looks a little bit more like an arrow instead of a triangle now. So sometimes I hear Expansion Arrow or Disclosure Arrow as well. But basically you click on it to Open or Close folders in List View. One tip here is if you click on the Disclosure Triangle you'll see that it expands the folder here but doesn't go any deeper. If you want it to expand everything inside this folder hold the Option Key and then click on the Disclosure Triangle and you could see every single folder under this folder is now open.
Now a second thing I love about List View is the columns which is kind of ironic considering that its competitor is called Column View. But the columns in List View are actually more powerful because they show you information. Like, for instance, here is says Date Modified. You can see the date modified for all these folders. If I open up this folder here I can see Date Modified for all the files and folders in here as well. In other views you can only really see one of the files or folders at a time. Here you can actually see a whole bunch of them together. You can customize these columns as well. You can drag the line between each of these in the Header here to  resize it. Double clicking will actually snap-it to the optimal size. So, for instance, if the Kind Column was too small and you can see how it truncates some of those names here, double-clicking here will expand it to be the perfect size for everything. You could also rearrange these. For instance I've got Size before Date Modified. I can click and drag and move this over here. This is probably how you would see it by default. Date Modified first and then Size and then Kind. 
Now next we have Sorting. You can Sort in different views but you can do it so easily here in Column View by simply clicking on the Column Head. So Date Modified, I can click there and now it is sorted by Date Modified. Notice it is sorted descending here. If I click again it's ascending. So it is easy to Sort and in either direction. One thing to be careful with here is you've got Use Groups. Let's go here into this folder here and I've got a bunch of files and I can say Use Groups and now they are grouped by Kind. Once you do that it is basically like kryptonite for the List View. You suddenly can't do a lot of things. For instance I can't even open up this folder here because it is grouped by Kind so it doesn't make sense to actually open this up. So while this is useful in itself, if you want to access to most of the other features in List View you don't want to use Use Groups.
Now it is also easy to add columns here to sort by different things. Anywhere in this Header here just Control click or two-finger click on the trackpad or right click on the mouse and now you can easily add different columns. So I've added Date Created, let's move it over here. So now I can see the Date Created and Date Modified for each folder or file. I can sort by each thing. I can Control click here and remove things pretty easily as well. Here's another tip. You can see here under Size that only the size for files is shown. Not the size for folders. That's because to calculate the size for folders the system actually has to look at the size for every single file and add it all up. So it's not on by default. But if you go to View, and then Show View Options, or Command J, there's a checkbox here, Calculate All Sizes. Turn that On and you can see it will show you the sizes for all the Folders as well as the files. 
Now I also love the Keyboard Shortcuts when it comes to using List View. Here I have nothing selected. But if I use the Down Arrow it automatically selects the first thing and I can use down and up arrows to select any item I want. If I want to expand something I don't have to go over here and click, I can use Command and right arrow and it will expand. Command left arrow will collapse. Now you can still use keyboard shortcuts that work in other views. For instance, Command Down Arrow goes into the current folder. Command Up Arrow goes up to the folder above it. 
Now you can do some cool things with Command Right Arrow. For instance if I were to select several folders, like this, and I use Command right arrow it opens up all of the selected folders. Command left arrow will close all the selected folders. If I did Command A here I can do Command right arrow and it opens up all of these folders. Now remember how holding the Option Key would open up everything. Let's try that as well. I'll do Command left arrow to close everything. Now I'm going to use Command Option right arrow and you could see it opens up all folders and all subfolders. I'm now looking at a complete list of every single folder and file in my Documents folder. If I don't already have everything selected I can do Command A here and do Command left arrow and it closes everything. 
Now the most powerful thing about List View is it is the only view where you can take actions on files in different folders at the same time. So, for instance, let's open up this folder here, maybe this one as well, and see I've got this file. But then let's go to this folder here. I can select this file here holding the Command Key down. I can select both. I now have both this file and this folder, which is in this folder which is in this folder AND this file in this folder selected. I can do anything I want with both of these files even though they are in different locations. I can drag and drop them somewhere else and both files move. I can Open them. I can Rename them. I can Copy them and then once copied I can Paste them, making a copy or hold the Option Key down and move them to another location. I can Delete them or drag them anywhere I want, maybe onto an app to open them both in that app at the same time. Or attach them both to an email message. You can select any number of files that you want and any number of different folders all here in one List View. 
Those are the five reasons that I think List View is the most powerful and my favorite. But here are some more tips. If you want to be able to see what's going on with these files, maybe previews of them, there are a few ways to do it. One is you can go to View and then Show Preview. You may be familiar with the Preview area here when using Column View. But it also works the same way in List View. So I can get this nice preview here, even moving this line to make it larger, and then be able to see which file I have selected without using QuickLook or anything like that.
Also if you want to see the Icons a little bit better you can go to View, Show View Options which we saw before, and here I can turn up Icon Size. So now the icons are a little bit bigger. Which still may not be big enough to really preview an image but it does give you an idea of which image is which. 
You can also change the Text size here if it is too hard for you to read. 
Also here's another keyboard shortcut tip. You can use a letter key to jump to a spot in the list here. So if I want to jump to the Notes Folder here I just press N and I'm there. T will jump down to Test. C up to Current. It's get a little tricky when you actually have files involved as well. So here if I use M you can see it jumps here, not there. i does jump there. It's a little confusing as to exactly what it selects. 
Another tip isn't found in View options but under Finder Preferences. If you go in there and under Advanced you can select Keep Folders on Top in Windows when Sorting By Names. So you have to have Name Sort here. But notice how the Files Folder jumps to the top of this list. I have that off. You can see it is in its alphabetical spot. So if you want to have all the folders on top you can and you can still use List View as normal. 
Remember you can use it in Open Dialogues as well. Here I am in Pages, going to open a new document. I can switch to List View and then use all of these same tricks here while viewing in an open or saved dialogue. So if you're used to using another view like Column View or especially if you're still using Icon View give List View a try. After you get used to it you'll find that it's very powerful and really the only view that you need. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “5 Reasons Finder List View Is The Best”

John Jones

2 years ago

Hi this is my go to view as well but I can't click on the option to calculate all sizes, everything else in the options I can do. I'm sure I had this turned on previously.

Gary Rosenzweig

John: Are you looking at a folder full of files? Or something special, like "Recents?"

Ralf

Hello Gary, I have the issue that I can't manage to copy files to a subfolder in List view with "Command & V". All copies end up in the main folder "Documents". What am I doing wrong?

Ralf: Control+click (right click) on the Folder in List view and choose Paste.

Jane

Thanks Gary. I can see great benefits to List View, but the main reason I use Icon View instead is so that I can arrange files manually within a folder, rather than by Name, Kind, Size, etc. I have Snap to Grid turned on and just drag files to wherever I want in the window. Would love to use List View, but manually arranging files doesn't seem to be an option.

Michael

Thanks Gary. I'm converted to List View :-) I might be missing something, but when I configure, for instance "Documents" to look exactly as I wish, and then press "Use As Default" it doesn't seem to use those settings on my other finder Sidebar items e.g. Downloads or Desktop. Essentially, is it possible to create a preferred view and then have it used as the Master for all items in the Finder Sidebar. Hope that makes sense? Regards Michael

Michael: That's probably because you have already set those other items to something custom. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKXCjD4HdpY

Thanks Gary. That clarified things.....

Evan

1 year ago

Hi Gary. It appears to me that the disclosure triangle is available only with folders in the cloud, not with folders stored locally. Am I missing something? Thanks

Evan: Do you mean to open and view the contents of a folder in List View? No, you can open those in list view no matter if it is an iCloud Drive folder or not. That predates iCloud Drive.

Evan Baker

Yes you're right. My error was in my "Group" setting. Has to be set to "None" to see the disclosure triangle. Thanks for your videos.

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5 Reasons Finder List View Is The Best

Comments: 11 Responses to “5 Reasons Finder List View Is The Best”

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