How do I get Finder windows to hold their settings?

Not here. don't even know what it is

Not me, either. What's TotalFinder?

My current theory is that there were two parts to the problem: one, in the Finder, was fixed by 10.7.2. The second is that .DS_Store files --containing windows settings-- aren't being saved due to permissions problems. I'm pretty sure the Finder runs with user-level privileges. As the caching of the content --which includes key window settings-- is completely invisible to us users, it is hard to connect the dots. But if someone is very observant and can detect a clearly failing case, then try to manually overwrite the operative .DS_Store, obviously with the same user-level privileges, my theory says the operation will fail.

Yeah, it's a bit crazy, but ... anyone got a better theory?

Well OK, so a couple of you don't have TotalFinder. I have & I thought it was that but it seems I *MAY* have found a solution to the problem (this applies to everyone who either has or hasn't got TotalFinder BTW).

I'm pretty sure in saying that all changes to a Finder window are saved in the preferences file COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST which is located in your ~/Users/YOURACCOUNTNAME/Library/Preferences. Am I right ?

Well, going by that theory I realised that if you set up your Finder window with all your favourite settings, e.g. correct font size, correct window size, set the "New Finder Windows Show" setting to whichever location you want,etc... and then you made that file READ ONLY & LOCKED the file, you therefore wouldn't lose your changes to any of the Finder settings you've made even after multiple logout's/reboots/shutdown's, because you're denying OSX the right to change the settings at anytime by making the file READ ONLY. OK ?

This doesn't affect the Finder's sidebar as those settings are stored in COM.APPLE.SIDEBARLISTS.PLIST, so you can continue to add/remove stuff from your sidebar even though :-)

Here's what I did & hopefully it should work for all of you (I've written this out in a Dummies Guide Style so that everyone can understand what to do)...

1) Close all currently open Finder windows & then open one again so it should be showing your current default settings.

2) Change all the Finder settings to whatever you want e.g. correct font size, correct window size, set the "New Finder Windows Show" setting to whichever location you want, etc...

3) Open another Finder window & go to ~/Users/YOURACCOUNTNAME/Library/Preferences & locate your COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST file (ignore the COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST.LOCKFILE file).

4) RIGHT CLICK once on the COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST & select GET INFO. Now carry out the following instruction in this order, and I'll explain later why...(*)

5) At the bottom of the Info Panel should be a section called SHARING & PERMISSIONS. Open it by clicking on the sideways triangle & it should reveal something like this...

6) Where it says your account name, it should be showing READ & WRITE ACCESS Privilege's. Click the dropdown triangles next to where it says READ & WRITE ACCESS & change that to READ ONLY Privilege's (FOR YOUR ACCOUNT NAME ONLY !!), like I have in this screen capture I provided above. Don't change the Privilege's for any other account that may be showing in your SHARING & PERMISSIONS, as the changes your making to the Finder only apply to YOUR ACCOUNT.

7) In the same Info Panel near the top is a section called GENERAL. In this section is an option called LOCKED. Click the box so that it should then look like this...

8) Now look back down to the SHARING & PERMISSIONS section you changed before & make sure that the READ ONLY Privilege is still set to READ ONLY. (*)= I say this because I found that as I LOCKED the file, I saw that my Privilege's changed back to READ & WRITE for some reason, so I changed them back to READ ONLY again & this time they were retained as well as the file being now LOCKED.

9) Close the Info Panel window & that's it !!

I've tried multiple logout's/reboots/shutdown's since I made these changes to my COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST 2 days ago & it works everytime... the window size is always the same & where it should be, the icon size is the same as I always wanted it & more importantly the "New Finder Windows Show" continues to be in the same location I want it ALL the time, compared to before where it would default back to my HOME directory after every logout/reboot/shutdown.

If this "fix" works for your account & there are other users using the same computer & they too have admin privilege's, then login as them & carry out the same procedure as described above, but making sure that you choose THEIR ACCOUNT NAME when you're in the SHARING & PERMISSIONS section !! ;-)

I hope this works for all of you :-)

Thanks for your work.

I think we are discussing two different groups of settings, each of which may be susceptible to getting scrambled.

I'm satisfied that some settings are stored in the invisible .DS_Store files in each directory (folder) because I can make a save-copy of this file, change the actual view, and see the original view of that directory restored when I restore the actual .DS_Store file from the save-copy. These settings include the "Always open in <something> view" and "Browse in <something> view" visible when you activate Finder-->View-->Show View Options.

I simply haven't looked at COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST so I'll take your word for it that some _other_ important window view parameters are stored in that file.

Sure, the method you describe will prevent Finder from messing with the COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST settings. That makes sense if somehow Finder is scrambling the settings you made before storing them to this file.. My question: what if you _want_ to re-arrange your desktop? Do you undo the changes you describe? Then, make the changes you want? After that, how do you persuade the Finder to save the new settings before you write-protect COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST again? I would expect Finder to keep those settings in memory for "a while".

A minor mystery: Why does the "Locked" control act so strangely? I don't know. If I recall correctly reading about "Locked" a very long time ago, it is maintained completely separately from file permissions. Maybe "Locked" goes back as far as System 1. It's a bit strange to have two completely independent mechanisms for write-protecting a file, and maybe what you are seeing is simply a side-effect of that strangeness. I don't think this is a particular serious issue. Is it?

Has anyone found a solution to this yet? I'm using 10.7.5 and all my Finder windows used to stay put but for months now they've all been opening up in one single location on my monitor. I move them to where I want them (I have 4 internal drives in my mac pro that back up to 4 external drives and I like to have the backup drives finder windows opened directly beneath the cooresponding internal drive finder window), I even leave them opened for awhile and access them, hoping that the mac will 'learn' and remember where I put them, but always to no avail.

The obvious question is: why did Apple do away with the Finder's ability to remember these placements, sizes, etc..., but no one will get that answer so it's pointless. The real question is the one that finds the solution. I've gone into my Finder viewer options and told the Finder window for each drive to always open and browse in column view but that has no bearing on the Finder window itself staying where I've put it.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone smarter than me has found a solution. I'm opened to third party apps if that's the solution; I don't care, I'm just tired of having to move the Finder windows 50 times a day.

Thanks for any help. Fingers crossed...

I never found a reliable solution to this, except for upgrading to 10.8. But you probably won't be surprised to learn that the Finder in 10.8 is still broken when it comes to window handling. Yes, it now remembers opened windows, locations, and sizes. BUT about half the time when I log out and check the box to have apps and windows reopen when I log back in, the two Finder windows that were open fail to re-open. Other programs and their windows always re-appear. So, when this happens, I have to reopen those windows. At least they re-open in the proper locations and sizes. Considering all the issues in OS X and iOS, I suspect the code has gotten too complex for all the bugs to be eliminated, even in the latest releases.

browncoat101:

I think there may be 3 components to non-holding of Mac windows. Going back to point at which a number of people complained about this issue, suddenly. (Did this occur at the release of 10.7.0 or 10.7.1? I do not recall. Here they are:

#1. Apple broke something in the Finder that caused SOME people to have this problem. But probably the majority of MacOS users did not have the issue. My reasoning: as far as I could see there were small numbers of complaints on some major Mac-related forums. But nothing like an avalanche that would occur if it was widespread.

I was one of the unlucky people to experience this problem. And I was VERY frustrated by it, because my workflow depends heavily on icon arrangement.

#2. EINacho in the post above (30 March 2012) reports good results with adjusting the permissions settings of the master COM.APPLE.FINDER.PLIST for your account, so this approach seems worth trying.

#3. My pet theory also involves messed-up permission settings, but with respect to the invisible file called .DS_Store that exists in every folder. As I have posted above, it seems clear that some windows settings are stored in this file. If the permissions of this file are sufficiently messed up, the Finder simply cannot save windows positions, etc. Unfortunately, this file and its permission settings are only visible to users via the command line, which is also normally the only way to fix its permissions. (I guess some 3rd party utilities could probably do the job, too.)

Clearly, Apple fixed #1 in a subsequent release for most of the people experiencing the problem. There may be some residual effects of #1 for a very few people. Considering that, and the fairly strong likelihood of a permissions problem... It would be useful if you could examine your permissions closely and see if you can correlate your issues with what's described in #2 and #3. I think you have a lot more internal disks than most people. Maybe that gives you more opportunities to have systematic permissions problems -- and for systematic exploration of the problem.

I hate to bring this up, because it seems to be such a generic fix: Have you tried Verify and Repair Disk permissions in Disk Utility?

My experience: As far as I can tell, most of my issues were solved by the later MacOS release, with the possible exception of view settings, which occasionally seem to revert to list view, from my usually-preferred icon view. Most importantly, my icon arrangements are rock-solid. If my view settings alone are getting whacked sometimes, it is an minor annoyance to me -- so minor that I really have not gone to the trouble of carefully observing and recording what actually is happening. It's really possible this is cause by something I'm doing.

HTH

Thanks for the replies, guys. I have not tried disc utility yet so I'll try that straight away, but I run those kinds of utilities pretty regularly so I doubt it will do much. But it's worth trying so thanks a ton for the suggestion.

I really don't want to upgrade to 10.8. It really bugs me that everything is becoming os iOS oriented. I've got nothing against the great mobile movement but I still sit at home and work on a mac pro all day. The user interface gets less and less desktop-user friendly as things progress. That's how I feel anyways. Besides, I've dealt with enough bad os updates in the last few years; I'm taking a break for awhile.

If the disc utility stuff doesn't work I guess I'll just continue to live with it. Thanks anyways. And thanks for all the good posts that preceeded my question. I like seeing the history of efforts to fix things.

Hey,

This bug has been bugging me too for a month or so. I tried all the above supposed fixes, but none worked for me.

BUT what did eventually do it for me was to revert the setting for "New Finder windows show" to something that's available in the default list, mine is 'macbook' (so not set a custom folder with 'Other..').

I did first trash the com.apple.finder.plist file as suggested before, and started from there. That's how I noticed it when applying all my preferences one by one.

Now it remembers finder size and sidebar width for me again 🙂

(I'm on Mountain Lion 10.8.2)

Hope it helps someone out there!

Hi everyone,

Try this

1 - click on finder in top left side of ur desktop then select preferences

2 - in general icon check always open folders in a new window

3 - then select third icon of sidebar and uncheck all

4 - restart mac

5 - open finder window(u can see there is no icons in finder sidebar)

6 - again goto sidebar icon in finder - sidebar,check all icons u want to arrange sidebar in ur finder window(including desktop icon)

7 - now in finder window u can see favorites icon,infront ot that u can see show icon,click on that

8 - then it will show every icons u checked

Hope this will helpfull for all of you...🙂

I have a similar problem. Finder doesn't remember the view options for sub folders on my external storage drive. I set the folders and sub-folders view options to "always show in icon view" but only the root folder shows up in icon view and the sub-folders show in the view that finder window had last time when it was closed. Anyone else having this issue?