Why does Apple count the folder as 1 when I want to know how many files there are in a folder?

You selected the folder itself and when you perform a Get Info, it will include the folder in the count.

Here is an Automator Quick Action solution (that I named Folder File Count) that gets the count of files (not sub-folders) in a selected folder. You right-click on the folder, and from the Finder's secondary menu, you choose Quick Action > Folder File Count.

and the result for a folder containing 10 files is:

The Automator workflow looks like this:

and the replacement script code for the Run Shell Script action:

#!/bin/zsh

: <<'COMMENT'

Right-click on a folder and then from the Finder's contextual menu, select Quick Actions > Folder File Count.
Displays a dialog with the folder name and its contained file count.

COMMENT

typeset -a filecnt=()

function folder_count () {
    osascript <<AS
    display dialog "Folder: " & "${1}" & return & "Count: " & "${2}" ¬
    with title "File count for Folder"
AS
}

# handle tilde paths if run from Terminal
FOLDER="${1:a:s/\~\//}"

# ignore dot files (e.g. .DS_Store) and sub-directories
filecnt=( ${FOLDER}/*(N^/) )
# pass folder name and array count of files in folder
folder_count "${FOLDER:a:t}" ${#filecnt[@]}
unset filecnt
exit 0



Northman wrote:

This is something the operating system should solve.

You can let Apple know here: Feedback - macOS - Apple