Can I rearrange the Finder Sidebar items?

Having the Devices and Network below the favorites list is very annoying when you use many different network volumes and disks. Since the Devices and Network listings change more frequently they should be more accessible.

Also, a major use of the side bar is for demounting drives and cameras.

It is frustrating and not very user friendly when you need to scroll down the side bar list in a small finder window (due to laptop screen) to eject an ipod or camera that is hidden due to being placed at the bottom of the list.

Apple should allow us to change the order of side bar items to suite our needs. Otherwise I am forced to hide the favorites to mantain easy access to the network and devices on the side bar. Losing easy access to the Favorites is not a acceptable solution.

A fix to this change in Lion would be greatly appreciated.

You can move things to a degree, but you can't reproduce the Snow Leopard sidebar. 😟

Drag the icon, on the Desktop, of the device to the top of the Sidebar, anywhere you like. Other items can be dragged where you like.

Yes, any folder or internal drive can be dragged to the favorites, BUT you cannot drag any demountable volume to the favorites, so this is not an option...

Any volume that may need to be ejected or demounted cannot be added to the favorites. This makes sense because the favorites shouldn't list volumes that may not be currently accessible.

I discovered this that will help you at lease get your Computer to the top, which I find very useful.

Convert the following plist to XML using terminal:

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Edit the plist:

open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Find in the hierarchy Favorites >> VolumeList and then look for:

<key>Name</key>

<string>Computer</string>

Look immediately below that for the visibility key and change the string from NeverVisible to AlwaysVisible:

<key>Visibility</key>

<string>AlwaysVisible</string>

Close and save

Convert the plist back to binary:

plutil -convert binary1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Relaunch the Finder:

killall Finder

Tada! Hold Command and drag the items in the Sidebar to get your computer on top, where it should be.

I hate the new sidebar. How can Apple be so stupid as to make it impossible to move Devices to where you want it (and I want it near the top)? Bad job, Apple. Are we supposed to scroll down in the sidebar every time we need to eject an external drive? This is a move worthy of Microsoft!

I have the same complain about rearanging volumes =(

I find this extremely annoying as well. Of course you can drag any volume to the favorites list - BUT - if you unmount them, they do NOT reappear there when they are re-mounted. You have to manually add them back again.

Also, I work with a lot of volumes that require frequent mounting and un-mounting. It's a time waster to try and keep them in the favorites list so I've given up.

Constantly having to scroll DOWN to get to the bottom of the list is ridiculous. So combine that with the fact that there are NO MORE COLORED icons in the sidebar. Talk about ***-backward-going-in-the-wrong-direction-mentality.... So with my poor eyesight, I find basic navigation within the Finder becoming more and more of a strain.

Seems like Apple is going out of their way making things MORE difficult for the Pro user as they try to simplify things for "switchers" and for the "rest of us...".

While I'm on a roll, I find that every time there is a big issue from us users about something that has been changed in the OS with an update, more and more of the solutions are from power users that post up terminal commands to rectify those issues, or try to direct people on how to edit .plist files. These people are certainly trying to help but working in the terminal is VERY risky business for the average user.

Configurability from the Finder is slowly going away with every new OS incarnation, forcing average users to dig deeper into areas they should NOT have to be dealing with. You see the problem here?

And lastly, I'm not hater. Far from it. I've been a loyal customer for 20 years which is why it's so sad and frustrating to me.

It's just that I hate to watch this slow yet steady progression into the pale grey realms of un-configurability...

d

Ed,

Does this method you describe Move the DEVICES list to the top, and the FAVORITES list to the bottom as with 10.6, or does it just place the main Startup Disk device above the Favorites list, or inside the Favorites list, just asking before I do this, thanks.

There is also a way to get the color to the sidebar, with SIMBL and Colorfulsidebar 1.0

http://lifehacker.com/5838882/replace-lions-monochromatic-finder-icons-with-old+ school-colorful-ones

gapos

There are a couple of hacks to restore color to the icons, and use app icons, including LionTweaks.

But as far as I know, none will swap Devices and Favorites, and all require relaunching the Finder after each startup.

Better than nothing, I guess.

By all means, let Apple know your opinion here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

The ordering of Lion finder sidebar is wrong, I agree with you on this.

The first thing I want to see at the top are the devices, then the shared items (I have sevral network drives that show up there), and LAST should be the Favorites.

Either Apple should allow for a swap back to the earlier Finder behavior (Leapord) or offer customization of this APP to fix the obvious "out of order" approach that is now "FIXED" as the only one they offer.

Finder is fundamental to the usefulness of Mac computers, and someone really screwed it up, in my view, trying to be clever. Favorites are NOT my first thought when using devices, local and shared.

Customization should be added to the Finder that includes ordering the groupings according to user preferences.

I've made this suggestion, but I have a feeling it won't get changed any time soon.

I just installed Lion, assuming it would be even better (per the advertisement and promotion) and now Finder is not at all as useful or easy to use given the need to scroll down to get to new devices and shared items that appear on my network from time to time.

I sent my suggestion to the feedback area. They really need to fix the Finder Sidebar so users can configure it to work properly.

Placing Devices below Favourites in the sidebar is a fundamental interface design error.

Without writing the entire interface design riot act here:

- When the list of favorites is longer than about ten, inserted thumb drives or other devices are often invisible in the window when they are mounted. This causes confusion for new users and requires experienced and novice users alike to carry out more operations to get the same result. Both the cognitive and operational load are heavier, making the design inferior.

- For users using top-down wayfinding approaches, devices are at the top of the conceptual hierarchy. So putting them at the bottom of the list creates a cognitive stall and disrupts users' work behaviours.

- For users using bottom-up approaches, (Favorites are a well-thought out facilitator of bottom-up wayfinding approaches), having Devices at the top of the list is not particularly disruptive. This is because the list of devices is usually short. So the Favourites header is rarely hidden below the bottom of the window. Thus, the conceptual disconnect is minimized.

In reality, most users use a blend of top-down and bottom-up way finding, and both are served by having Devices above favourites.

The superior solution is, of course, to let the user decide how they want things ordered, because different users have different navigational styles and work needs.

It's impossible for designers to anticipate the needs of every user - what we can do is make it easy for the user to mold the interface to their particular requirements.

Thankfully, Mountain Lion now allows you to rearrange the order of the side bar items by Dragging Devices, Shared or Favorites to your preferred order.