I'm running macOS Big Sur version 11.1. In Finder I would like to have the default display for a folder group all of the subfolders at the top of the list in alphabetical order by Name, and then have all of the files in that folder sorted by Date Modified (most recent first). Is this possible? If so, how do I do it? Thanks!
You can Group and you can sort within the group, but you can't group by folder. You can group by Kind, but that doesn't show what is in each folder.
List View is as close as you could get to show the contents of folders, but you would have to sort by date modified.
If you are listing files by which you can gather with some criteria, you could create a search folder to gather all of the files from each of the subfolders and then sort that listing by date modified. No, you can't search in a list of folders. That just isn't possible in Spotlight.
A convoluted way to achieve what you want would be to tag every file in each folder with a name matching the folder, the Group by Tag and sort by date modified. I think you would have to first search for every Tag, then group the search results by Tag.
Thank you Barney. I think you're confirming what I suspected, that it's not possible using the standard group/sort options in Finder to have all folders listed alphabetically at the beginning of the List view, followed by all files in that folder sorted by Date Modified. I use a Windows computer for work all day and use a program called Total Commander as my main tool to access files and folders, and I have it set up to sort the way I've described here. When I switch to working on my Mac for personal business, it can be an adjustment. Happy New Year!
Finder - Sort on two columns
