Change the default list-view column order

Apr 20, '02 09:38:12AM

Contributed by: greyerlynx

I use list view quite a bit. I'm mostly interested in the size and the date columns and turn the others off. I was really happy to find that I could drag the size column to be before the date column since it's more important to me. Unfortunately, it always reverts to the default column order on new windows or windows switched to list view. I wanted any folder that was asked to display in list view to retain my preferred order.

I could, of course, open a new window, set it to list view, move the columns, and close it again to set the "global default" for new windows to list view with my preferred column order. But I didn't want to use a list view global default; I just wanted any window that I switched to list view to come up with the proper column order.

Read the rest of the article for an explanation of how to make the Finder retain your preferred column order for any window you set to list view...

I decided to see if the finder preferences had any way of remedying this little problem and they did. If you edit the finder preferences, com.apple.finder.plist in your user's Library/Preferences folder, you can change the default order of the columns.

I use BBedit, but any text editor should work. Just open up the preferences and look for:

<key>StandardViewOptions</key>
A few lines down from there will be a group of <dict> tags with five <key> properties in them.

Each set of properties refers to a column in the list view. All you need to do to change the order in the list view is to change the order they're listed in here. So I grabbed the whole <dict> to </dict> tag pair for the phys (physical size) column and pasted it right below the dnam (name) column properties. It's easier than it sounds and it should make more sense once you see it in the editor. Just remember to take the whole <dict> definition from <dict> to </dict>. The second key in the list (ColumnPropertyID) will tell you which column it is.

Just by moving that set of properties it permanently reordered my list view columns. Now the list view is even more useful than it was.

[Editor's note: greyerlynx and I had an email exchange over this hint. I had thought that the global-switch option or changing any one window would handle his problem, but they don't. This tip is useful if you, for example, have a main view that is column-view, but want to make sure that if you do open a list view window, the columns are in the order you wish them to be, even if it's a brand new folder. The only possible problem I see with this is that you'll have to recreate the edit if you ever trash your Finder prefs.]

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