I like List view, and I’ve tried to make it default for all windows using the View preferences, but new folders I open show up in Icon view… please help?
You are puzzled by the behaviour of Finder’s View settings:
- when you tweak some view settings on pristine folder (never visited
by Finder before), Finder creates a custom set of settings and writes
it into .DS_Store file inside that folder, from now on the custom
settings are persistent (even if you rename/move/copy the folder) - you can tweak the view settings visually by resizing/reordering
columns, moving icons etc., but also you can tweak it via “show view
options” dialog (CMD+J) - on the “show view options” dialog there is one interesting button:
“Use as Defaults”, when you click it, it remembers current view
settings and stores it somewhere globally with Finder settings, and
now the important point, this Defaults are applied to all future
visited PRISTINE folders (without custom view settings) - to get rid of custom view settings and reset folder back to
pristine settings you have to hold OPTION on "show view options"
dialog and select “Restore to Defaults” - this will not remove
.DS_Store file but it will mark folder as pristine again
See this post which helped me understand what is going on:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/17596088#17596088
Note: not all settings are stored in the “Defaults”. For example
"Arrange By" setting seems not to be participating in this mechanism.
Makes sense?