Mac OS X - Cranking up your File Browsing with TotalFinder
There has been one thing about Mac OS X that I have wished has had an overhaul since Mac OS 10.4. Many of you out there will probably agree on the same thing here; Finder has been neglected. If you have ever wish to have a tabbed browsing feature in Finder, then take a look at TotalFinder. TotalFinder doesn’t just bring tabbed browsing to the table, there are a few other features that I regularly use.
Visor Styled Sliding.
Those of you who are familiar with the Terminal plugin ‘Visor’ would understand this feature. For those of you who don’t, here is a brief explanation. Basically with the tap of a hotkey keystroke of your chose, you can summon the TotalFinder window onto the screen. When summoned, the window nicely slides into view from the bottom of the screen (and slides back on either the same keystroke pattern, or when you click away from the window).
I absolutely love this feature for the same reason I love Visor, I have quick easy access to my finder app, and effectively my whole file system. It also does away with the visual clutter you get when activation Expose.
Dual Mode
Another useful feature I find with TotalFinder is it Dual Mode. This with this feature you can view two separate folder views side by side. Dual mode can be quickly activated with the ⌘U keystroke.
I particularly like this as I have both folder views in focus. It began ever annoying trying to move between two Finder windows that were overlapping, or trying to move to a window you have forgotten to open. I use Dual Mode often when I am making incremental edits to my Jekyll setup.
Other Useful Features
In Mac OS X, the following commands in Terminal will allow you to see hidden files. You have to restart Finder just to view hidden files, and have to do the same again if you want to hide those files again.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
With TotalFinder, using the keystroke ⇧⌘. will give you quick access to ‘show/hide hidden files’.
Another good feature is ‘Asepsis’. Every time you modify a folder in Mac OS X, it creates a hidden file called .DS_Store
These files are made to store your Finder preferences (i.e, Folder View, icon Sizes, labels etc.), but the problem is that these files get created regardless of whether or not you have modified the default finder settings. This can be particularly annoying when working on with file transfers from command line.
The Asepsis feature is off by default, but when enabled allows you to redirect the .DS_Store file to /usr/local/.dscache. This is a separate area dedicated to just these files. Asepsis can also disable the creation of .DS_Store files on network mounted disks, which can be quite useful.
Thoughts on TotalFinder
I am quite happy with TotalFinder. When I first installed it I was a bit worried it was going to somehow mess with my OS install, but everything seems tidy and TotalFinder integrates well is the OS. As I previously mentioned, I absolutely love the ‘Visor’ feature after knocking down the animation speed a few notches. TotalFinder might be a bit shy on features compared to Forklift 2 or Path Finder, but I personally find them a bit too ‘heavy’ on the feature-set.