Finder not updating correctly in mountain lion

Open Finder, press Option key, select Go > Library, open Preferences and delete com.apple.finder.plist

That won't work. The basic issue is that the ill-designed Finder is slow to update and has been doing it for years. The best way to get it to update is to OPTION-click and hold the Finder's Dock icon and select RELAUNCH.

Then, join the crowd and File a bug reportwith Apple about this shortcoming..

I have the same problem and it is very frustrating. I do a lot of video conversion and It is really annoying that I have to refresh the finder. I use the app Refresh Finder. It adds a little refresh icon to the finder window. you can look at it here.

http://www.soderhavet.com/refresh/

Yes, I got the Refresh Fnder tool from Mac Update. It's small, free and works on Mountain Lion. Brilliant.

When new files arrive in directories, ftp can see them, Terminal can see them, but Finder (which used to work well) has not been updating the contents listings!!! This is a huge problem when people send me files, as Finder does not always show them, or show all of them. This is very poor indeed. Finder should, of course, always update it's views. But it does not on OSX 10.8.2. At least with Refresh Finder you can force the refresh. It is an essential tool that we should not need.

That tool works well. And yes UGH - I have this problem. It's particularly frustrating to find out you've been redownloading the same multi gigabyte file because it didn't appear in Finder. Only to find out that terminal sees it just fine. I've tried restarting Finder in these instances, and I usually end up with Finder beachballing forever and requiring a reboot. This tool works great though.

Thanks,

Joseph Elwell.

I recently encountered this bug while upgrading to a new iMac and couldn't find anything to actually fix it. I thought my experience might be helpful for someone who doesn't want to use a work around. I eventually found that the bug was specific to a directory and it's subdirectories. Moving all the files, trashing the directories and recreating them fixed the problem for me. I'm now back to the normal automatic updating. It was small number of directories for me so this may not be an option if the bug occurs across a large range of your filesystem. However, narrowing down where the problem occurs and trying this may be worth it if you are not satisfied with living with the bug.

Useless info since you failed to mention which directory. Provide the details ao all of can learn.😉

Actually, it isn't and if you took the time to think about what was said you would see that.... The directories were those that experienced this bug. It isn't a delete these folders and the problem is fixed system-wide situation. The problem wasn't system-wide. It is an exercise for the individual user to identify exactly which folders behave incorrectly. For reference, not that it matters, but it was one directory I had created within my home folder that experienced the bug. After deleting it and recreating it and its subdirectories, everything was fine. I never had a problem within any other directories. Like I said in my original post, if you find that your problem is more wide spread this solution might not be appropriate. In any case, it requires some testing to find the lowest level directory that experiences the bug.

Thanks for clarifying. Since there are thousands of directories, specifics help. The Finder deals with all of them.

I was having problems with the Downloads directory. I tried installing the Refresh Finder tool. This tool didn't help me, unfortunately (version 1.5.0 on Mac OS 10.8.4).

I used Terminal to rename Downloads to Downloads-old:

$ cd

$ sudo mv Downloads Downloads-old

$ mkdir Downloads

I then used Finder to mark all in Downloads-old and move them to Downloads. Why? Because if Command-A can't mark all the files and move them, it may show some pattern to the problem.

Wierdly, *all* my files were copied, including the ones that weren't marked (because they weren't visible to *be* marked).

If I use the search box in Downloads by the file name, I can see the files.

So the issue appears to be something between Finders' knowledge of the files (it knows about all of them - or Command-A wouldn't also have captured the files that aren't visible), and Finders' idea of what it should show. It shows the old situation. Suggests a callback failure in the display code. When new files are added, Finder knows, it just doesn't trigger refresh in the display listing... Or at least, without getting heavily into debugging, that's what it looks like. I'll use the "Search" box workround for now. It does work, so long as I can remember what I called it... and there's always Terminal and "ls" when I can't 😉

Seriously annoying bug, though!

This is annoying -- but if you simply ask the finder to get info. on that directory it will update it immediately. cmd-i the directory that you wish updated. It is a work around and it seems to work for me.

I started to experience the same issue with Mavericks. All began whith a folder in which I was moving, viewing managing files through Panic's Transmit FTP client. When saving files to this folder (located in several nested folders in "Sites"), they didn't show, either through Finder or through other software "Open" dialog box (experienced in Adobe CC suite, Apple Preview and several others…

On the other hand, Transmit had zero problem seeing the new files, as soon as they were created. And any search in the Finder (Command-F) based upon file names would display the files…

Now, the problem is extending to other Folders I didn't touch with Transmit and that didn't have any problem until now.

It seem the bug has been passed along from Mountain LIon to Mavericks, although I did not experienced it with ML…