Finder Windows lose view settings

YES, I thought I was alone because no one else has been talking about this. I work with many custom setups for windows and some times they will make it all day and other time they get all jumbled every hour or so.

I am having the same problem. I have tried everything mentioned above and they still get lost.

I also have quit the Finder safely and then restarted it to see if it would save them, but after time they return to some scrambled default that I haven't figured out yet. At first I thought it was "Date Last Opened" but that was not quite it.

This even happens if I never restart the machine.

Quick addendum - I also checked my settings for "Arrange by" - it is set to "None" for all of the windows, my "Sort By" is always "Snap to Grid" and I don't use "Clean-up By"

Ah, pretty glad this happens to others as well. Very annoying! Like some of you from above I use numerous custom setups for different windows in my workflow. And all of a sudden there's the sidebar and the toolbar back again, the windows open in places I don't want them to and files sorted not the way I need them to be. Grrr! Thought it might be the .DS-Store files, but it wasn't. I'd really appreciate if I had true control back for the settings!

(Hope you get what I meant cause this is a German typing)

Same problem here, both on my MacPro and my MacBook.

I had it also on Leopard, it disappeared with Snow leopard.

Everyone I know are using only list view, it seems that only people who try different views have this problem.

I guess w'll have to wait for a major update.

You guys are not alone. I started a thread quite a while ago talking about icons being scrambled and settings not being honored. There have been many responses. No fixes have come forward but I have shown a work around. When I'm sure a folder is arranged properly, I go to Terminal and go into the folder. I then execute

sudo cp .DS_Store DS_store

and provide the requested password. When the folder gets scrambled, I just go back to the folder in Terminal and restore the .DS_Store file with

sudo cp DS_Store .DS_Store

I do this only where I have a larger number of icon in the folder and their placement is important to what I am doing. This is a nuisance but it is a better alternative to continuuing to reorder a large number of icons. Hope this helps. Here is the beginning of my thread if you are interested. As I said above, no one has any solutions yet.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3210568?start=0&tstart=0

FWIW, OS X 10.7.1 seems to have fixed it for me. Hasn't happened since. And other threads about this have quieted down since 10.7.1 was released. I hope you get it sorted out.

I am also using 10.7.1 and nothing seems to have changed. In addition, the fixes listed for 10.7.1 do not mention anything that is Finder related or that seems to have anything to do with the moving icon problem. Your particular problem may have been something different and maybe fixed. I'm sure there are more than significant issue with Lion.

me too I am afraid!

I have many folders that I need to be in icon view, while others are in list view etc - all part of my workflow.

I have given up trying to maintain these view settings - I am wasting my time.

All settings disappear after minutes - no need to sleep or to shut down, just closing a window will do it

I PARTIALLY solved the issue by booting into safemode (hold down shift key during startup) and the situation was better, so it was something in my startup items - have a look to see what is there - some 3rd party apps may not be 100% Lion compliant and may be affecting the Finder - its definitely worth a look and for the sake of 5 mins for safeboot/test, you may go a long way towards solving yr problem.

See what items are in your startup list and if in doubt, or no longer need them, delete or remove them from the startup list.

good luck - I am *SO* frustrated with Lion, I regret installing it - first bad experience in 27 years of using macs.

I have been using Macs for over 27 years myself, and I do recall one or two buggy releases (System 3.0 I think).

I understand your frustration and wish I could help. It may be Lion or a software conflict (suspect old pre-Lion software, especially ones that install kexts (extensions) in the System folder). Something I did before installing Lion was use System Information to find and eradicate any PowerPC software on my Mac. Perhaps a system log or crash log might provide clues in the right hands.

Even though 10.7.1 seems to have fixed it for me, I know there are many more bugs to be fixed in Lion, and maybe design modifications to some of the new features.

Update to my last post. My Mac just had a partial relapse. Downloading to my Downloads folder may have triggered some other folders in my home folder to lose their settings. Not as severe as before, but obviously 10.7.1 was not the total fix for me either.

I've been using the Mac since 1985 and Apple does this to us about every other major release: screw up the UI. It's like they don't even care or look for this in development/test. What ****** me off in general is that they change things just to change things. Functionality that's worked for years goes out the window because some programmer wants to do something that he thinks is cool.

As far as I'm concerned, Lion is a big disappointment. I'm sorry I upgraded just to get a handful of bug fixes (yes, they actually fixed a few things that I've been living with since Leopard) but only find out that other stuff is now broken. Good thing Apple only charged $30 for this; if they hit us up for $129 like they did in the past, I'd be madder than a wet cat.

SynthGuy wrote:

What ****** me off in general is that they change things just to change things.

Apple does seem to be trending that way, like Microsoft with the Office ribbon (not optional in Windows), and some feature-itis thrown in too. I've been disabling more features I don't want with each new release. I'm sticking with Lion but I'm not convinced its better overall than Snow Leopard.

****, even the windows I have minimized in the dock get sorted new (sort-of secretely) and when I take tem back to full view they're not like how I had set them up. GRRR!