How to Change View Options for ALL Finder Windows?

Hello FilipAAOfficial,

Be very careful when running Terminal commands you find over the internet - especially ones from 3 years ago. In this case, you appear to have been lucky. The command appears to have worked and there were no errors.

This is UNIX-land. Just because it lists errors doesn't mean that anything went wrong. Just because it doesn't print an error doesn't mean that all your files haven't been deleted.

The process takes some time, depending on how many files/folders you have.

Be patient, let it run.

Once that$ sign shows up, follow the above instructions. Works for me on an old Snow Leopard and newer Sierra.

None of these commands works for me. I just receive an error message, please have a look at the attached screenshot below. ⬇️

Hello there, GreenAppleCore.

The following Knowledge Base article provides some great pointers in regards to your question:

Mac Basics: Modify your windows

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2487

Particularly:

Change the view and view options

• Depending on your window's view, you can modify how it displays its contents.
• To change a Finder window's view, click the appropriate button in the toolbar, or choose as Icons, as List, as Columns, or as Cover Flow from the View menu. (For more information on Finder window views, see The Finder.)
• To customize the window further by view, choose View > Show View Options.
• If you choose List, Icons, Columns, or Cover Flow view, you can choose whether to apply your settings to only the current window or to all windows. Select the appropriate checkbox at the top of the View options window.
• In each view option you can modify what displayed and viewable. For example, with Columns view you can modify the text size, and icon and preview column visibility. In List view, you can modify the icon and text size, select what file information to display in columns, and more.

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.

Cheers,

Pedro.

Use as Defaults is supposed to carry over to all newly opened Finder windows, but it doesn't change any previously opened windows. If you want to revert all previously opened windows to that view, follow these steps:

Launch the Terminal app (in /Applications/Utilities/), copy & paste this command into the window that pops up, and hit the return key:

sudo find / -name ".DS_Store" -exec rm {} \;

At the Password: prompt, carefully enter your admin password, since nothing shows up on the screen, and hit the return key. When the default prompt, usually the $ sign, pops up again, quit the Terminal app, restart, and open a Finder window, set it up the way you want, and click on Use as Defaults button. All subsequently opened or created folders should retain that view.

Good computing.

I ended up having to use

sudo find / -name .DS_Store -delete; killall Finder

which is basically the samething you posted, but this one worked, possibly killing Finder was the difference?

running Mavericks

Worked for me thanks so much!

It worked for Mavericks.

Thanks so much!

I tried this and can't seem to get it to work... this is the message I get back in terminal:

I"m running latest version of Yosemite on a 27" late 2011 iMac. Any help would be much appreciated thanks guys!

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved, less people are likely to look at it. You can link to this one.

Oh thanks Eric... sorry, I don't use these forums much :-)

You have to wait until you get back the Dave$ prompt.