Finder Ignores Open In New Window

John Baro1 wrote:

I have Finder preferences set to open in new windows instead of tabs, and I have Preferences->General set to Never prefer tabs. This works for all Finder windows except my Home and Applications windows, and it looks like all windows in the Go menu seem to ignore this setting. They all open in the same window. I'm not sure now how I managed to have my Apps and Home window both open at the same time.

Is there any way to get the Go windows to not ignore my settings? Every time I try to open a folder, I never remember to right click, and have to go back then pop up the menu.

Hmmm....

Try a —SafeBoot How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

Takes a bit longer to get to the login screen, does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, including dynamic loader cache, etc.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

If no insight or resolve—

Could be corrupt plist, delete the com.apple.finder.plist

Found here Finder>Go>Go to Folder copy and paste:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

Relaunch your Finder from the >Force Quit>Finder>Relaunch

Please tell us exactly how you are opening these folders.

The usual way is to double-click. Is that what you are doing? That opens the folder in the SAME window (not on a new window, or a new tab, the same window, replacing what was there before).

If you choose Go->… then again, same window.

If you want all folders to always open in new windows then what you need to do is View->Hide Toolbar.

I am not sure I understand...

Of course, if you choose Go->Applications (say), it means to open the Applications folder on the CURRENT window.

This has nothing to do with tabs.

Say you have ONE window with ONE tab, then click Go->something

You will still have only one window and one tab. That is how it has always worked, since well before Finder had tabs.

I am glad that we got to what you wanted.

But please note what I have been saying all along: the situation you were experiencing did not involve new tabs or windows; each folder was just opening in the same window.

By the way, the settings for tabs vs windows do work - if you change it now, without Toolbar, you will see...

And, for a historical note: the way you are using the Finder now, which is sometimes referred to as "spatial Finder", is the way the Finder used to behave in the original Mac OS - each window "was" the folder.

One consequence of that is that you can't have two windows showing the same folder, as you can easily check.

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

If you want all folders to always open in new windows then what you need to do is View->Hide Toolbar.

FWIW, hiding the Toolbar doesn't work in Column View. At least not for me.

dialabrain wrote:

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

If you want all folders to always open in new windows then what you need to do is View->Hide Toolbar.

FWIW, hiding the Toolbar doesn't work in Column View. At least not for me.

That makes total sense.

In the duality between "spatial" and "browser" Finder, Column View is clearly a browser kind of window.

You can't have a bijection between folders and windows, when a window shows several levels of the folder hierarchy.

The first time I used a mac, it was in 1985 - a 128K, soon followed by a 512K (not mine, these machines were at my university).

Like you, I struggled with the new Finder when Mac OS X came along.

It took me a while, but Column View and the Sidebar proved their usefulness. It is great that there is still a choice.

EDIT: dialabrain, as you may have guessed, this post was meant as a reply to the OP

FWIW, if you control or right click on a folder you can select "Open in New Window" which will always work.

Indeed. Just thought I'd mention it.