"Name" portion of my Finder windows too long

I have the same problem since 10.9.

Hi Michael. I had the same problem too. And after reading this thread, I tried something different and it seemed that it fixed the problem, at least for me, for now. Maybe you can try it and confirm.

1. I think the key is, this change affects all the enclosed folders. So, if you want to change the "Name" column width of all of the folders on your hard drive, start at your hard drive (highest) level. Close all windows in Finder, then double-click your hard drive icon (if you do this at several folders down, it will seem like it doesn't do anything).

2. Adjust the "Name" column width, and the window size to your liking. Go to menu -> Show View Options -> Then click "Use as Defaults" button down at the bottom. That sets the "Name" column width for all of the folders on that hard drive.

If you have a second drive or an external drive, you have to do the same thing to that hard drive.

If you have a shared drive on a server, you have to do the same thing on the server (can't do it remotely).

Worth a try.

-Alex.

Hi Alex,

I tried out your suggestion, but it doesn't work for me at all. It's just one of many bugs i have since updating to Mac OS 10.9. Other issues are that finder and itunes windows suddenly will not scroll any more until i restart. The same thing happens with drag and drop functionality. I'm waiting for updates and consider 10.9 to be still quite buggy.

Greetings Andreas

Having the exact same issue since OSX 10.9

So far no fixes after 3 months.

Together with all the other bugs that were introduced with OSX 10.9 I feel assured to say that Windows Vista was a clean OS compared to this seemingly alpha version of an OS.

same issue. Brand new iMac, fresh install no TM restore.

I had the same problem after upgrading to Mavericks. For me the most frustrating thing was the "Size" column getting too small, making it impossible to see folder sizes at a glance. I seem to have found a fix by:

1. option-dragging the name column to be very small - about half of what I actually want.

2. option-dragging the date and size columns to the size that I want - and leaving about an inch of space between the right-most column and the right side of the window.

3. closing the window

After that, reopening the window results in the date and size columns "stuck" to the right side of the window and at reasonable widths and the name column is fluid depending on the window size. Not bad.

I can confirm this is a new bug w/ Mavericks...I didn't experience it in Lion or Mountain Lion. Now after a couple upgrades and a fresh install I can definitely verify that I continue to see this popup.

I tried Alex's suggestion of changing and making defaults at the root HD level but still experiencing the same behavior. Also tried collapsing all folders-->cmd+A, and setting defaults that way to no avail.

Sometimes you can set the "default" view and position of a window by Command clicking on the close button.

When you reopen it, it should open in that way.

This solved it for me. If I was paranoid, I would say it was some creepy way of forcing us to have a "tags" column in all our finder windows so we can learn to tag everything. Tags are great, why aren't you using them?

Or just that the mac programmers love tags so much they've never opened a finder window without the TAG column?

:-)

Ack! Back to not-workie.

The full-screen toggle doesn't work too great if using TotalFinder tabs. Also, it's quite slow.

I wrote the following AppleScript that solves the issue. Whenever the column width is too wide, just run this and it'll force Finder to fluidly resize the columns by making the window really wide, then resizing it back to the original size.

tell application "Finder"

tell the front Finder window

-- get the current bounds of the finder window

set b to the bounds

-- create a really wide window

set the bounds to {42, -7, 3000, 600}

-- set window back to its original size

set the bounds to b

end tell

end tell

Of course, this will work better if bound to a keyboard shortcut. I personally bound it to CMD + E using BetterTouch Tool. I wrote a blog post about this in case you need more information. http://christianvarga.com/2014/01/fix-finder-name-column-width-bug-osx-mavericks /

I am having this problem too. Also when uploading things into my browser - not sure if any of these fixes will work for that.

Same problem here...

As a Mac user since 1986, it really galls me that the Finder today has a *less* intuitive interface, *fewer* common applications keyboard shortcuts, and *more* interface snafus than way back then. Lets face it Apple is become a new Microsoft.

Which means that its time to find the new startup that smashes the big screen with big brother on it, because they do things better.

Apple has just gradually become less awful than Microsoft.

Same problem here since "upgrading" to Mavericks. None of these ideas so far fix the issue, especially not the tricks that have been around for years, like holding down the Option key. This is a new bug.