Resize Columns To Fit Filenames

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. If you use Column view through the Finder on your Mac you're going to want to checkout this new setting. 

Different people like to use different views in the Mac Finder. For instance I like List View here because I can see all the items here with information in different columns like size, kind, date created and so on. Others like Icon View and it is user friendly and allows you to organize things in two dimensions. Others like Column View. Column View is very useful in that you can view all the folders in one location and then you can select one and then you can see all its contents. Then you can select another folder inside of that and so on, each one opening up in a different column. But you always have access to the levels above. So if I wanted to switch to this folder here I can do it in one click, like that, to change my view to see the contents of that one. I can do the same thing with any folder here at any level. It is very easy to move around and also very easy to find a file and then decide you want to move it to somewhere else by dragging it to a level above into a folder, like that. 

But the thing that people complain about with Column View is the width of the columns. So here you can see the first column is the perfect width for displaying the names of all of the folders. But if I select this folder here I get a second column that's too narrow. You can see how some of the names here don't display. They've got these 3 dots here in the middle and just the beginning and end of the name. In order to see the whole thing you've got to drag the line to the right to widen the column. But if you switch to another folder, like this, you can see this new column just takes the same width as the parent column here. If you go back to this folder you can see you're back to actually just seeing this column width. So it can get very frustrating always having to drag the column to the right. 

You do have the ability to double click on the line like this and it will snap to the perfect width for all of the contents there. Also note that if in System Settings under Appearance you've got Show Scrollbars Set to Always. Then you've got Scrollbars here. You can't drag them at all or double click it. But you can use the small area to the bottom here to drag or double click just like as if it was a single line with Show Scrollbars Turned Off. 

So if you use Column View and you find yourself frustrated about how the column widths work. Well, I've got good news for you. Starting in macOS Tahoe 26.1 there's a new setting. But you probably missed it because it is not in System Settings and it is not in Finder Settings either. It's in the View and then Show View Option Controls. In here you're going to see different controls depending upon which view you're in. So for instance here if I was in Icon View you can see I get different options here. If I'm in List View, different options still, and Column View gives you still different options. So you have to be in Column View to see the options for Column View. The new setting here is at the bottom and it is a Checkbox called Resize columns to Fit File Names. If you check that what's going to happen is the columns will always resize to be the perfect width. The width you get if you double clicked on the line. So if you get that turned On, now let's take a look in this folder. You can see this column opens up at the perfect width. If I click here this one opens up at the perfect width, and so on. If I were to go to this folder here I get a different width for the column because I've got some long items here. If I go back here it gives the perfect width for this one. So you never have to resize the columns. 

But you still can. You can still grab a column and make it narrower or wider if you want. It will just snap back to the perfect width the next time you bring up that column. 

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Now one thing to know is this setting is universal as are a lot of the settings for Column View. So just checking it here means anytime you're in Column View it's always going to resize the column to fit the File Name. That's not necessarily true with a lot of the other View options especially in List and Icon View.

Now it is not perfect. For instance here if I were to turn off Show Icons you can see it doesn't need quite as much space but it doesn't resize the columns here. Now if I were to go to, say, another folder like this and another one maybe go back here and then turn on Show Icons you can see that it gets the icons back but it doesn't resize the column width. So you end up with some truncated names. But it is easy then to leave and then come back. Then it forces the column to resize. I've even seen that happen when going to another folder. It doesn't get it right the first time. But then I go away and come back and it gets it right. But it seems to work the vast majority of time and it is easy to correct when it doesn't . It also has its limits. Like for instance here I've got file names that are so long that it hits some sort of limit and it won't go to full size. I have to stretch to the right or double click for it to get to that size. If I go away and come back you can see it does have that upper limit there. 

I've gotten tons of questions over the years from people that wanted to know how to have the columns resize like this. So I know this is going to make a lot of people very happy. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.