Understanding Finder Window Position, Size and View Settings

When you open a new Finder window, it can be confusing as to why the new window is at a specific location, size and view settings. Understanding the difference between Finder windows and folder locations is key, as well as knowing the difference between browsing and opening new windows, and what is remembered by the Finder.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at how the Finder remembers window size, position, and settings.
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Now when you use the Finder you may wonder how when you open a new window it decides which view to use and where to position and how to size the window. The important thing to remember about the Finder is there are two different things. One is a Finder Window, like this, that's like a viewing port to seeing files and folders on your drive. The other is Location. The actual place where files are stored. Like these folders here or this Document's folder where all of this is stored. Position data is saved for each location, not for the window itself. So if I'm opening a new Finder window and say I open it to the Documents folder it's going to remember the position and location. Let's move the window up here. I'll close it. Then I'm going to go to File and New Finder Window. You could see it puts it back in the same place. The reason for that is because the window opened to the Documents folder. In Finder Preferences I have, under General, New Finder Window Show Documents. So when I open a New Finder Window it shows the Document's folder.
However, if I were to open another window and that window were to be for another location then it would obey the size and position for that folder. What is stored as the settings for that folder. Now opening a new folder in a new window that is not the default here is a little difficult. If you've got this Open Folders in Tabs instead of New Windows not checked then there is a variety of ways to do it. For instance, I can hold the Command Key down and double click on a folder. I can also Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad, right click on a mouse, and use Open A New Window, or with a folder selected I can go to File, and then hold the Control Key down and open changes to Open a New Window. So any of these will open a new window. 
Let's Command double click and you could see that this window doesn't open in the same location as this one. As a matter of fact if I were to resize it, reposition it like that it will remember its location. Command double click and you could see it goes back there. But if I go to another folder, like this one, Command double click it is going to have its own position and own size that it will remember. 
Now where it gets confusing is that most of the time we're not actually opening a new window. We're using the same window and we're browsing into a folder. So, here's this business folder. Instead of Command double clicking to open up a new window I'm just going to double click and then browse into it. You could see what happens there is it's going to use the same window size and location as before. It's not going to move this window and resize it just because I went down into a new folder. On top of that by simply viewing this folder it's resetting the position and size. So it's remembering, okay you're looking at the Business folder now and this is the size and location of it. So now if I were to Command double click it remembers that, not that position where it was down here or up there. It's going to recreate the previous position and size. Notice it off-sets it a little bit because otherwise it would be confusing. It would be covering it up completely and you would maybe not know that there was a window behind this one. So now if I resize and reposition, Close, Command double click will remember that. Double click will simply browse into it and Reset that size and location. Now Command double click will use that same size and location with a little convenient off-set to help.
Now the other thing to think about is the settings for how things are viewed inside of the window. So here I'm in Icon View. I can go to List View. I can go to Column View and if I close this window and open a New Finder Window it remembers. But what about going inside. So if I go into this folder here it seems to be using the same Icon View. Let's change this to List View. Let's go back up. Now let's go back down and you could see it goes back to Icon View. So by browsing it's not going to change the View from what you were looking at before. It's going to keep the same View.  
Now what if I open a new window. I'm going to Command double click and you could see it actually remembers it was List View. I changed it to List View and that kind of set a preference for this window here. Let's go and change it to Column View. If I double click now it is Column View. But here's the interesting thing. If I go to another folder, like Personal, I Command double click, it's also in Column View. Let's change it to List, Command double click it remembers List. But now if I go back to Business, Command double click remembers List as well. It seems there is a preference set. But what happens if you open up a New Window. So, if I go in here and I say I want to see List View for all New windows then it is going to be List View no matter what new window I open. 
Let's open up the Documents Folder again in a New Finder Window and you could see it does remember this. So what is the difference? Well, we go to View, Show View Options or Command J, there is some settings up here. The settings here are always Open In and Browse In. What it says after it, like Icon View, that's going to change depending upon what you have set. So in this case I've got the Documents folder set to Always Open in Icon View. Let's go into the Business folder. That's not set to anything. So, what happens is going to depend on what you are doing. If you are Browsing here there is a setting right there, Browse in Icon View. It means that when I'm here at this location if I Browse it's going to Browse in Icon View, staying in Icon View. If I change this to List, now you see it says Browse in List View. If I go here now I'm browsing in List View.
Now let's go back to Icon View here. What if I open a New Window? I'll Command double click here. You could see it's Icon View. If I change to List View it remembers and now I Command double click and you can see it remembers that as well. But the same for any other folder. So basically when browsing like this it's going to remember Browse in Icon View and you'll see what's in that new folder in Icon View. But when opening a new window it's going to use kind of this universal default. Whatever it was you were last using and it's going to remember that the next time you open up a new window that doesn't have this set. 
Now what happens if I do set this? Let's set this to List View. Let's say Always Open in List View. That is a setting for the Business folder. So now when I Command double click the new window opens in List View. If I Command double click the Personal folder I can change that to Column View. Let's try that. Command double click so it remembers Column View. Will it do Column View for this? No! It will do List View because I had selected this option just for the Business folder. It doesn't change that kind of universal default. The last time I looked at a folder that didn't have this turned on, that was Column View. So I go in here again it's Column View. A new folder like this, Column View. Now what happens if I browse. If I browse into it, yes List View. Always Open in List View is going to supersede the browse in Icon View there. But here it's not going to supersede it because I didn't have this turned on. So Browse in Icon View supersedes that kind of universal default of viewing new folders in Column View. 
It does get a little complex. If you really care about this stuff you may want to experiment just like I'm doing. Create a new folder. Put a bunch of folders inside it. Put a bunch of temporary files inside of those and play around with opening New Windows and browsing into them using these settings. Whether or not they are On or Off. 
Note there is also a very different mode that you can be in in the Finder. If you go to View and then you Hide the Toolbar. Then you don't get a Toolbar anymore. Things behave differently when you double click them. If I double click on Business it opens up a New Window every time. Every double click will open up a New Window rather than if you have the Toolbar On then you're in Browse mode. Now you're browsing in the same window. I'd recommend NEVER to use the option with no Toolbar at all. It's just too valuable to have this Toolbar. But some people like it. It's like the old version of the Finder from years and years ago. 
So I hope this gives you some insight as to how the Finder remembers things like window size, window position, and which view it is using. So even after playing around with it you'll still confused by it all don't worry. A lot of people are. There are just so many different ways that you can open new windows and dig down into other windows and position things and change views that it really gets pretty complex. But in the end you don't really have to worry about it. If you go into a folder and it's not in the view you want just change it to the view you want. There are even convenient keyboard shortcuts for all of that. I find it gets worse if you are in the habit of opening and closing Finder windows all the time. So you go into here. You do some stuff. You close a Finder window. Next time you need a Finder window you open up a new one. I tend to just have a Finder window open all the time. I do like to use tabs. So I may have a tab for each folder that I use pretty often. Like this and just go between them and position it someplace. If I don't need it and I'm using another app I can just Hide the Finder to get it out of the way. It's always there and I just basically keep a Finder window open at all times and that way I can have each thing set just as I want. 
So that's something to think about if you always find it frustrating as to what settings a  New Finder Window is going to use. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Understanding Finder Window Position, Size and View Settings”

Brian Foster

2 years ago

The confusion your are resolving in this video is all related to Apple's decision a number of OS's ago to change the Finder behavior from what it had been for decades (likely to resemble a less-capable iPhone's behavior than a Mac's). I still use a a SIMBL to make plain old double-clicking open a folder in a new window just like it did for decades, which is both more functional and instinctual (human interface guidelines): it's easy and obvious to track the folder hierarchy.

Brian from Boston

Your knowledge and understanding of these deep technical issues is OUTSTANDING!
Thank you!

Comments Closed.

Understanding Finder Window Position, Size and View Settings

Comments: 2 Responses to “Understanding Finder Window Position, Size and View Settings”

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