Sorting folders before files in finder. Help!

Sorry, but I would never respond to an end-user like this. Someone needs something at least help them get acclimated to the computer they are using.

My takeaway from this thread is that even when people tell you there is nothing out there to help you or address your issue, perseverance and continually bumping the thread can occasionally produce fruitful results 😊. I'm liking XtraFinder!

Agree. "Go elsewhere" and "Use a new operating system" are not very friendly replies. If someone is venting due to frustration about lack of a feature they miss, folks don't have to respond to them with equal frustration and self-righteousness. It's easy to overlook the saying "If you don't have something nice to say don't say anything" but in online forums, applying this approach seems to make for a much more pleasant experience IMHO. Cheers!

This worked for me as well exactly as the poster described and as you are reiterating. I chose XtraFinder because using a Finder sort option applies a few more limitations on how files/folders show up that are not present when simply checking option to have folders on top of files with XtraFinder prefs.

only XtraFinder can do it properly.

The other solutions described here, create multiple groups of different types of documents. So the files are not shown in alphabetical order.

Its a pity apple does not put a preference for this simple but useful thing.

Very annoying indeed. One simple way (that's what I do) is to give numbers to your folders e.g. 1-Admin; 2-Personal etc. -- they will appear on top.

How do you modify the plist file?

twtwtw why are you trolling so hard? This is a very valid feature request. I should be able to customize my computer the way I want it. The "Apple way" isn't always what people want.

Heres your answer: http://www.howtogeek.com/67100/force-your-mac-to-put-folders-on-top-of-files-win dows-style/

So Far, there seems to be no simple install and work soloution

XtraFinder doesn't work with El Capitan unless you tinker with Recover Mode.

Edit Plist file, which is cybersome.

Finder Sort > Name and Arrange by Kind works partially for me, but is there anyway to do this system wide?

This is just astonishing, I created an account on this forum especially to reply to this thread. After many other frustrations with features that seem logical to have, I hit the same issue as the original poster. It is 2016 with "El Capitan" and basic functionalities of such kind are a pain for a $2000 product. No words. Just simply at the peak of exploding. Good thing I use this thing only for some quick XCode-ing then throw it as far as I can. Btw, XCode keyboard mapping is horribly wrongly thought out. Not at all for developers. Yes I know you can remap and all that, but... everything you use on OS X pretends to be "special" which means more of my time. I won't event start on .DS_Store files and other "genius" ideas and bugs with Wifi, crashes and old apps support. You just continuously keep looking for workarounds so you can see your information the way you need.

I would really hope that soon we can get legal rights to run an OSX you paid for in VMs on PCs that have proper OSes like freebsd and linuxes. I will do my contribution in helping people stay with choices of freedom, flexibility and user control. At this point I think even a windows will be giving more power to users.

This problem is so frustrating I thought I would post with what helped for me, based on reading through all these posts plus other places. I see a lot of people saying there IS no way to fix this other than to use something like XtraFinder (which ksec points out does not even work with the latest OS version). The one thing I do not see mentioned is that the sorting USED TO work more like the sorting on a PC. In 11 years of using Macs, I never had trouble finding my files until recent "upgrades" (currently using Yosemite 10.10.5). I have so many files I can't get anything done due to not being able to find anything, unless they can be arranged in a helpful, logical manner.

It's helpful to remember that the Mac's Arrange feature means groups, and then Sort is arrangement within the groups. It is also necessary to know that in order to access the "Sort" feature you have to use the ridiculously roundabout method of holding down the Option key so Arrange By in the View menu becomes Sort By. Also, it is important to tell your system that folders are what you want first, by dragging "Folders" above everything else in Spotlight preferences, as stated above (except that I did not modify the plist file and it still worked). Then when you group things by Kind (with Arrange By), the folders will be first in the list in Finder. This works whether I am in icon view or list view, etc.

Personally below the folders I usually like my files arranged by date, so I then choose that in Sort By. Now my files are not in order strictly by date, but they are in order by date within their groups of each file type. I would rather have no groups, but this is far preferable to not being able to find anything. (If I set Arrange By to None, then I have no groups, but then also I have no way to kick the folders up to the top, because the way they will is by making them the top group.)

So basically, Sort By does what Arrange By used to do in the older versions, and now Arrange By is just an annoyance for me. Folders are for organizing things, so to have them interspersed randomly among my files is unthinkable and counterproductive.

Lastly, as someone has mentioned earlier in this thread, you can give feedback to Apple directly, so that MAYBE the next time they upgrade they can take our gripes into account!:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I find that putting ~ before the folder names is the best solution.

There should just be simple settings to allow people to make a Mac work similar to a PC. For example cut,paste,copy and copy line of text...I still can't get used to the Mac version. I love my Mac and have had Macs for years too ( like 9 years now ) . Also there is a tool called BetterSnaptool which brings back the slapping windows to the sides and top like windows 7.

As far as folders first this should be by default. I don't think it has anything to do with PC or Mac. It just makes since. Imagine a folder that has tons of files in it and you have to scroll thru to find a folder to get further into the folder tree. It doesn't make since. I have a Library folder which has like 2K files in it and like 3 folders. I have to scroll forever to get to the stupid three folders. Arrange by kind doesn't always work... Also I think only the pure list view is the best way to view files and folders and I would really like a way to make that the only view that EVER comes up. The make default button really doesn't work but thats a different issue.

I'm new to Mac and have just found this thread so apologies if my suggestion's already been made.

Has anyone tried using tags? It isn't a perfect solution as you will have to tag every folder individually and it's also less than ideal if you already use tags for other purposes of course. Thankfully I don't, so tagging my folders yellow then arranging or sorting by tag works well. You can choose to leave some folders untagged if it suits your needs better, giving lots of flexibility.

As many have said already, the fact that the feature doesn't exist does not mean there is no need for it. Some Mac owners' lives do not revolve around Apple but we use Apple products as mere tools to do the things WE want to do. Believe it or not, there are valid reasons for organizing folders before files, and sorting by Kind doesn't work, because 2 files with the same name but different extensions will not be next to each other where we would like them to be, e.g. a .docx and .pdf version of the same document.

Since Apple is deaf to our pleas, I have found a solution that works for me. You must name your folders to begin with numeric characters, such as 1 articles, 2 books, 3 documents, 4 notes, etc. If you have documents that begin with numeric characters you may have to start the folders with 01 02 etc. or something that precedes the lowest order document name to begin each folder name.