Bug? Moving from a Finder search window only copies — not my goal

Well, you appear to be the only person with this bug. You can try some things to possibly root out the cause, but your responses seem to indicate you have no desire to do so.

If searching works in Safe Mode, that might provide some insight into the problem or at least clear some system caches which fixes some weird problems occasionally.

nukue333 wrote:

When I open a Finder window and search, and then try to move a folder from that view to another folder, it creates a copy in the new location rather than moving it.

I have never seen this behavior in 20 years of Mac ownership, only with Sonoma. I have seen other reports of this but only disputes that it's real — no solutions.

For example, I open a Finder window and search for a folder I know is on the desktop. I then attempted to MOVE it to an archive folder on my same hard drive (NO PARTITION and I am the only user + admin). Instead of moving, a second copy is created.

If I move the same folder directly from the desktop to the same archive folder, it moves.

If I open the Finder view of my desktop and move it to the archive folder, it moves.

So this issue ONLY happens when I try to move things from a Finder search window to another location. But I do that rather often so this is pretty frustrating. Would love a solution!

What happens if you hold the Option key when moving...

nukue333 wrote:

This clearly must be a bug.

It must be some permissions problem with your computer, perhaps just with your home directory or desktop folder. I cannot reproduce it.

Again, never seen this in 20 years using Mac.

Probably because you haven't had a permissions problem like this before.

Video below.

https://youtu.be/H8LDXv29vb8

Just so you know, the search field isn't that smart. It only searches by content. You even have to make a special effort to search by file name. So when you type "name contains whatever", you are literally searching for files whose contents contain the string "name contains whatever".

nukue333 wrote:

Sorry to create a confusing example. To clarify: *You do not need* to search "name contains" — I did that after verifying before the recording that it would pull up the file I needed — simply because I didn't want other file names showing for privacy. That has nothing at all to do with the issue at hand. This happens with any search, or at least any file or folder name search (done the normal way).

Hence "just so you know".

Backing up: As for permissions, I'm not ruling that out, just saying I have changed nothing on that front since I recently got this computer new; and also: this issue is not unique to the desktop. You could be moving the file or folder anywhere from a finder search window.

If you are trying to say that this occurs on a freshly installed, factory reset computer, then that's a different issue. But otherwise, after seeing all the crazy things people do with their computers in this forum, nothing surprises me anymore. It could be literally anything - but the end result is most definitely a permissions problem.

The quickest, easiest solution is to return to that factory fresh condition. Your chances of finding and correcting the problem are very low.

are you able to confirm you're also running Sonoma and following all the same steps?

Yes. I am following the steps that you described. Obviously I haven't done whatever it was that caused the problem.

If so, are you able to share a video of that?

I don't have a Youtube account and I'm not about to create one. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Are you using Dropbox or other cloud services and are these files in a cloud sync’s folder.

I do not have any problem moving files from a search folder whether or not the file is stored in iCloud. I don’t use DropBox, but from the problems people note here, I wouldn’t rule that out if you are using it.

No, it isn't just with the desktop or home folders. It is also happening to me. I accidentally copied folders in the root directory of my external hard drive. I only want to move those folders into another folder on the same ext HD, but it will only copy them, not simply move them, when I try to use drag & drop. After highlighting all the folders I want to move, I try to drag and drop, using the touch pads, not holding any other keys down, but it will only copy, not move.

No the only person with this bug, I am having the same problem, too, as described in my reply to this. There are also other Problems with this posted separately from this, and there are many people experiencing the same thing. I have tried everything and I cannot find any way to simply move files without copying them, thus duplicating them when I don't want to (and don't have enough hard drive space on the eternal HD to do that!)

No, it isn't just with the desktop or home folders. It is also happening to me. I accidentally copied folders in the root directory of my external hard drive. I only want to move those folders into another folder on the same ext HD, but it will only copy them, not simply move them, when I try to use drag & drop. After highlighting all the folders I want to move, I try to drag and drop, using the touch pads, not holding any other keys down, but it will only copy, not move.

Your description implies that there may be an ACL controlling write access to the top-level of the drive or you only have read access.

If you don't need permissions on the external drive, disable them with the Ignore Ownership checkbox in Get Info.