Michael Mortilla

Q: "Name" portion of my Finder windows too long

When I open most (but not all) Finder windows, the Name section is extremely long, even when the names in the directory or folder are very short.

 

Does anyone know a way to reset or define the width of the name column? The other columns seem fine.

 

screenshot.jpg

OS X Mavericks (10.9), 2008 MP 3.2gHz; 20GB RAM

Posted on Oct 29, 2013 12:29 AM

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Q: "Name" portion of my Finder windows too long

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  • by Jarno82,

    Jarno82 Jarno82 Dec 12, 2013 8:39 AM in response to o1sowise
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 12, 2013 8:39 AM in response to o1sowise

    This doesn't work for me.

  • by alepalep,

    alepalep alepalep Dec 20, 2013 12:45 PM in response to Michael Mortilla
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 20, 2013 12:45 PM in response to Michael Mortilla

    I have the same problem since 10.9.

  • by alexpselamat,

    alexpselamat alexpselamat Dec 27, 2013 4:58 PM in response to Michael Mortilla
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 27, 2013 4:58 PM in response to Michael Mortilla

    Hi Michael. I had the same problem too. And after reading this thread, I tried something different and it seemed that it fixed the problem, at least for me, for now. Maybe you can try it and confirm.

     

    1. I think the key is, this change affects all the enclosed folders. So, if you want to change the "Name" column width of all of the folders on your hard drive, start at your hard drive (highest) level. Close all windows in Finder, then double-click your hard drive icon (if you do this at several folders down, it will seem like it doesn't do anything).

     

    2. Adjust the "Name" column width, and the window size to your liking. Go to menu -> Show View Options -> Then click "Use as Defaults" button down at the bottom. That sets the "Name" column width for all of the folders on that hard drive. 

     

    If you have a second drive or an external drive, you have to do the same thing to that hard drive.

     

    If you have a shared drive on a server, you have to do the same thing on the server (can't do it remotely).

     

    Worth a try.

     

    -Alex.

     

    Untitled-1.png

  • by alepalep,

    alepalep alepalep Dec 28, 2013 12:48 PM in response to alexpselamat
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2013 12:48 PM in response to alexpselamat

    Hi Alex,

    I tried out your suggestion, but it doesn't work for me at all. It's just one of many bugs i have since updating to Mac OS 10.9. Other issues are that finder and itunes windows suddenly will not scroll any more until i restart. The same thing happens with drag and drop functionality. I'm waiting for updates and consider 10.9 to be still quite buggy.

    Greetings Andreas

  • by RandomThings13,

    RandomThings13 RandomThings13 Jan 5, 2014 8:41 AM in response to Michael Mortilla
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 5, 2014 8:41 AM in response to Michael Mortilla

    Having the exact same issue since OSX 10.9

     

    So far no fixes after 3 months.

     

    Together with all the other bugs that were introduced with OSX 10.9 I feel assured to say that Windows Vista was a clean OS compared to this seemingly alpha version of an OS.

  • by MusioMan,

    MusioMan MusioMan Jan 7, 2014 12:45 PM in response to RandomThings13
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 7, 2014 12:45 PM in response to RandomThings13

    same issue. Brand new iMac, fresh install no TM restore.

  • by LouisKreusel,

    LouisKreusel LouisKreusel Jan 9, 2014 9:52 AM in response to Michael Mortilla
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 9, 2014 9:52 AM in response to Michael Mortilla

    I had the same problem after upgrading to Mavericks. For me the most frustrating thing was the "Size" column getting too small, making it impossible to see folder sizes at a glance. I seem to have found a fix by:

     

    1. option-dragging the name column to be very small - about half of what I actually want.

    2. option-dragging the date and size columns to the size that I want - and leaving about an inch of space between the right-most column and the right side of the window.

    3. closing the window

     

    After that, reopening the window results in the date and size columns "stuck" to the right side of the window and at reasonable widths and the name column is fluid depending on the window size. Not bad.

  • by snownskate,

    snownskate snownskate Jan 10, 2014 1:55 PM in response to alexpselamat
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 10, 2014 1:55 PM in response to alexpselamat

    I can confirm this is a new bug w/ Mavericks...I didn't experience it in Lion or Mountain Lion.  Now after a couple upgrades and a fresh install I can definitely verify that I continue to see this popup. 

     

    I tried Alex's suggestion of changing and making defaults at the root HD level but still experiencing the same behavior.  Also tried collapsing all folders-->cmd+A, and setting defaults that way to no avail.

  • by Timothy Fink,

    Timothy Fink Timothy Fink Jan 10, 2014 2:13 PM in response to midifirst
    Level 2 (320 points)
    Jan 10, 2014 2:13 PM in response to midifirst

    Sometimes you can set the "default" view and position of a window by Command clicking on the close button.

     

    When you reopen it, it should open in that way.

  • by flick harrison,

    flick harrison flick harrison Jan 25, 2014 4:53 PM in response to dqjaz
    Level 1 (85 points)
    Jan 25, 2014 4:53 PM in response to dqjaz

    This solved it for me.  If I was paranoid, I would say it was some creepy way of forcing us to have a "tags" column in all our finder windows so we can learn to tag everything.  Tags are great, why aren't you using them?

     

    Or just that the mac programmers love tags so much they've never opened a finder window without the TAG column?

     

    :-)

  • by Michael Mortilla,

    Michael Mortilla Michael Mortilla Jan 25, 2014 4:56 PM in response to Timothy Fink
    Level 2 (289 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 25, 2014 4:56 PM in response to Timothy Fink

    No effect here.

  • by flick harrison,

    flick harrison flick harrison Jan 25, 2014 4:59 PM in response to flick harrison
    Level 1 (85 points)
    Jan 25, 2014 4:59 PM in response to flick harrison

    Ack!  Back to not-workie.

  • by levymetal,

    levymetal levymetal Jan 28, 2014 7:04 PM in response to Michael Mortilla
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jan 28, 2014 7:04 PM in response to Michael Mortilla

    The full-screen toggle doesn't work too great if using TotalFinder tabs. Also, it's quite slow.

     

    I wrote the following AppleScript that solves the issue. Whenever the column width is too wide, just run this and it'll force Finder to fluidly resize the columns by making the window really wide, then resizing it back to the original size.

     

    tell application "Finder"

      tell the front Finder window

        -- get the current bounds of the finder window

        set b to the bounds

        -- create a really wide window

        set the bounds to {42, -7, 3000, 600}

        -- set window back to its original size

        set the bounds to b

      end tell

    end tell

     

    Of course, this will work better if bound to a keyboard shortcut. I personally bound it to CMD + E using BetterTouch Tool. I wrote a blog post about this in case you need more information. http://christianvarga.com/2014/01/fix-finder-name-column-width-bug-osx-mavericks /

  • by Theseus,

    Theseus Theseus Jan 29, 2014 1:13 PM in response to levymetal
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 29, 2014 1:13 PM in response to levymetal

    I am having this problem too. Also when uploading things into my browser - not sure if any of these fixes will work for that.

  • by Iarla Kilbane-Dawe,

    Iarla Kilbane-Dawe Iarla Kilbane-Dawe Jan 30, 2014 4:52 AM in response to Michael Mortilla
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 30, 2014 4:52 AM in response to Michael Mortilla

    Same problem here...

     

    As a Mac user since 1986, it really galls me that the Finder today has a *less* intuitive interface, *fewer* common applications keyboard shortcuts, and *more* interface snafus than way back then. Lets face it Apple is become a new Microsoft.

     

    Which means that its time to find the new startup that smashes the big screen with big brother on it, because they do things better.

     

    Apple has just gradually become less awful than Microsoft.

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