Lion Keeps Re-arranging my Folders

MathGeekRob wrote:

Has anyone had any lingering rearrangement problems since upgrading to 10.7.2?

10.7.2 fixed the problem for me. none of these icon arrangement problems since updating ~4wks ago

prior to updating, when the problem was still occuring for me, I had been periodically deleting the .DS_Store file in my home folder and restoring a known good copy saved with home folder icons arranged as I wanted. I had this "good" copy of the .DS_Store in place just before I updated to 10.7.2

perhaps those of you still having problems after 10.7.2 might try deleting the .DS_Store file in problem directories and seeing if things are fine after that??

jannus:

I have no doubt that the Mail.app search operation you are performing is the trigger. That trigger has been widely reported.

I am trying to understand if some folders are more likely --or certain-- to suffer View Settings loss, while others are relatively --or completely-- immune. (That is what I observed before the 10.7.2 update.)

If the trigger always causes View Settings loss to all folders, then we users have little hope of fixing the problem. In this case, we should concentrate on reporting the conditions and symptoms as clearly as possible to Apple at http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html. I'm sure some Apple people read this forum, but that doesn't guarantee the issue will be noticed; it is much better to use the official reporting link directly.

However, if the trigger only causes loss to some folders, we have some hope. If that is what you are seeing, then we can look at what is different about those folders. If so, it is at least possible that we users can do something to change those folders that are affected. I've seen some evidence of this possibility.

So, again, please tell us if the trigger affects all your folders or only some of them. I assume that you are referring to folders that are open at the time you do the Mail.app search trigger, but please confirm this and tell us about any other conditions that might be relevant.

I have multiple hard drives, each of which are partitioned into two volumes. One of the volumes in each hard drive is used to store photographic images. I routinely store images from Photoshop CS5 to folders in my hard drives. I use the column view when navigating to find the correct folder for an image. After the store is complete, I almost invaribly find that the top level of the volume is in list view. The lower levels usually are in the view set in "Always open in..." Fortunately, when I go to icon view, the icon locations are correct. Lion still does not honor the "Always open in..." setting after browsing in a Photoshop "save as" operation in comumn view.

I've come across what I suspect is a new aspect of the same old Finder-loses-folder-settings problem:

When I restart my computer (for Software Update, for example), in Finder/Preferences/General the "New Finder Window shows" option is reset to the default.

I have to restore my setting everytime I restart.

Hardly a major problem, but yet another indication that the code for the Finder is still full of bugs.

Note: I've reported the problem with Apple Feddback

Janet

I found that the 10.7.2 update essentially fixed the problem of folders reverting to the default view type.

However, I was experiencing some lingering problems with some folders located in my User folder.

Following system restarts or relaunches of the Finder, folders located inside the User folder would still revert to default.

I found that resetting the "Home Folder Permissions and ACLs" was the answer to this problem. Since booting of my Lion DVD and running this process, I have not experienced any folder view resets.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/15/repair-user-permissions-in-mac-os-x-lion/

I managed to pull the wrong usb drive, one that was still mounted (while mac mini running 10.7.2 was sleeping). A third of my desktop was again resorted to the right side of the desktop, some folders that was on the right side jumped a bit to the right or up/down. A mess.

Sigh.

This *STILL* isn't sorted out in 10.7.4. W-T-F?

I have found that my folder locations inside of another folder have been remembered since 10.7.3. 10.7.4 still does not honor the "Always open in icon view" and similar settings after I do an "Open" command and browse for a file. It is a nuisance but it would be nice to have it fixed.

I haven't installed 10.7.4, but speaking for 10.7.3...

It seems to me likely that Apple's side of the problem has been mostly sorted out. To review:

Some of us were affected after we installed 10.7.0. In some cases our previous view settings for specific folders were scrambled, and MacOS ignored our attempts to set those per our needs using "Finder-->View-->Show View Options". (I nearly always want unsorted icon views, for example, so I can arrange the icons according to my workflows.)

Thinking about it, this really seems to describe two fairly distinct issues: 1) scrambling, which clearly was a bug --almost certainly in the Finder-- and 2) not saving new settings.

From the reports I've seen on this forum and others, scrambling was eventually fixed, by 10.7.2, if I recall correctly. But a small number of people reported problems afterward. I didn't systematically examine those reports, but it is my strong impression that most of them could be explained by a failure to save new settings.

If Adam Meath's post of 2 Jan 2012, above, is correct --and I believe that's very likely-- not saving could be explained by permissions problems. Here's my theory: it is not clearly documented, but almost universally agreed out here in user-land that view settings are stored in each folder in an invisible file called .DS_Store. If the permissions for this file were garbled, then it is possible view settings couldn't be changed. In 10.7.x (at least) the Finder runs at the current user's privilege level. There's no hope that an all-powerful system (Root!) could simply override. According to the referenced OSXDaily article, the hidden option in Disk Utility resets only home directory permissions and ACLs, but I'm guessing it has the indirect effect of correcting permissions and ACLs on .DS_Store files generally -- for files belonging to the current user, anyway.

How does this happen? I think there's a third issue: 3) When migrating to a new MacOS, file permissions sometimes get mangled. Verfy difficult to prove, but that's my impression.

In addition, I imagine that it doesn't help that the not-publicly-documented format of .DS_Store files was very likely updated to support new 10.7.x features. So update-time or at the point of first-opening each .DS_Store file under 10.7, there was yet another opportunity for glitches.

It could be really helpful if someone using 10.7.3 or 10.7.4 and experiencing this problem repeatably could take the time to examine the full permission settings of the .DS_Store file in the affected directory. Compare them to the settings of the same file in an unaffected directory, and then apply those settings to "failing" .DS_Store file. It would be really nice to nail this down. Or, disprove my theory -- that would be helpful, too.

I think this would require using the Terminal to reveal the all the permissions for these files, including the ACLs. Other than their existence and the fact that ACLs can affect file access, I must admit this area of the OS is beyond my knowledge. Someone more tekkie than me...?

HTH

Contrary to my message, I may have solved my problems. Let's say that I am in Photoshop and I want to save an image to a disk drive. I would navigate to the disk drive in column view (I have several) and folder and store the image. I would then find that folders set for "Always open in icon view" would open in list view when double clicked. This navigation would typically begin by double clicking a disk icon on the desktop and successively double clicking folder until I got where I want. Somewhat by change I realized that while I had set the "Always open in icon view" in "all" my windows, I had not so set the desktop to that setting. I have done so and have not had any problems so far. This is tentative as I have thought that the problem was solved before. Perhaps an unset state can propagate forward while double clicking and override the setting on inner folders. My recommendation is to endure that all folders have the desired opening state set. I set "Always set in icon view" but do not set "Browse in .... " I am not at all clear what this latter option is. Anyways, it is worth a try for those who still have some problems.

Still bad sometimes, even under 10.7.4

It is pitiful and the most annoying bug on Mac ever.

Same issue for me on 2 machines (iMac & MacBook Air) both on 10.8.4. Driving me nuts !! 😠

Even when I have a look at a messed up folder and try to restore the .DS_Store file some days in time it is ok some other days it is all messed up). Impossible issue, real annoying.