A Better Finder

Welcome to Working Mac, a new and (hopefully) ongoing series dedicated to helping you get the most out of your Mac experience. From tips and tricks to productivity boosters to system tweaks and more, it's all in play. In today's debut installment, we're going to walk though how to effectively replace the Mac OS Finder with Cocoatech's excellent Path Finder utility. Plus, as an added bonus, we'll go over a more current method of neutering the Dock, since so many of you have asked about it over the years. Let's do that first.

The final word on Dock killing, at least until OS X 10.5 "Leopard" ships

I've never been a fan of OS X's Dock, having mostly preferred using DragThing's Process Dock as an alternative. Almost four years ago now—January 2002 to be exact—I wrote an article called "Ding Dong, the Dock Is Dead," in which I tried to browbeat Mac OS 9 users into using Mac OS X 10.1 by showing how to make the then-new Mac OS look and behave more like the Classic Mac OS. A big part of that piece was a demonstration of how to move the Dock so it wouldn't start up, effectively "killing" it and thus leaving room for DragThing to serve as the Dock. That method worked for a while, until OS X 10.2 Jaguar showed up later in 2002, bringing with it a more, shall we say, determined Dock. This new and apparently vindictive Dock had Command-tab functionality as well as the system Desktop "hardwired" into it, meaning that the old method of simply moving the Dock.app program resulted in a very crippled Mac. Those little annoyances led to a follow-up article in early 2003, called "Killing the Undead," which not only offered a solution to the problems imposed by Jaguar's Dock, but apparently struck enough of a nerve out there that I still get emails to this day asking if the technique works in 10.3 Panther and 10.4 Tiger. So, while the problem and ultimate solution aren't exactly news, this is as good a place and time as any to address the issue for those operating systems once and for all. Without further ado, here is the Cliffs Notes version of my general reply to folks who still ask:

• Yes, the technique works in Panther and Tiger, but...
• No, you probably don't want to use it anymore.

You see, in Panther, Apple continued the tradition of anchoring actual useful and productive features to the albatross that is the Dock by making sure Exposé wouldn't work unless the Dock was running. Nice. In Tiger, it got worse, as Apple hooked Dashboard into the Dock as well. I can do without Dashboard (which is a shame, for all the promise the technology showed), but I'm hopelessly hooked on Exposé and Command-tabbing. So while killing the Dock outright is no longer a viable option, I did manage to eventually settle on a replacement technique. This method doesn't make the Dock go away entirely, but it does put the Dock into its very own Witness Protection Program, so to speak. Using one of my favorite freeware tweaking utilities, Marcel Bresink's TinkerTool, you can relocate the Dock on your screen and make it hard to invoke. Here's how:

1. If you don't have it already, download TinkerTool, install it, and fire it up.
2. Click on the Dock icon to reveal the Dock Options.
3. Set the Position to Top and the Placement to wherever you like (fig. 1). I find it the least intrusive at the end position, but this is highly subjective. The Dock should instantly reflect the changes you make here, despite what it says about needing to restart the Dock at the bottom of the TinkerTool window.

Figure 1

4. Quit TinkerTool.
5. Pull down the Apple Menu and select System Preferences.
6. Click on the Dock Preferences (middle of the top row).
7. Move the Dock Size slider to Small, turn Magnification off, and check the "Automatically hide and show the Dock" option (fig. 2).

Figure 2

That's pretty much it. Now, the only way you'll really ever see the Dock is if you pause on the 1-pixel area directly underneath the menu bar long enough for the Dock to slide out. Out of sight, out of mind, and you get to keep the cool stuff Apple has folded into the Dock over the years. Of course, windows will still minimize to the Dock, but using DragThing's Window Dock (set to show minimized windows only) or using Unsanity's $10 WindowShade X solves that last lingering issue. I'm sure this will all need to be revised once Leopard comes out, but we've got a while yet before that happens. Now, on to the main event: replacing the Finder.

Thank goodness for Cocoatech

In addition to Apple's Dock woes, it's not a stretch to say that Mac OS X's Finder isn't as far along as it should be by now. Indeed; it's really getting long in the tooth, from the hideous brushed metal interface (a subjective criticism, to be sure) to its lack of customizability to its penchant for crashing at the wrong time. There are whispers floating about that the Finder is slated for a long-overdue revamp for Leopard, but as I already mentioned, that's still a long way off. Fortunately, there's an alternative for those frustrated with the Finder: Cocoatech's $34 Path Finder. Now, I and many other Path Finder enthusiasts have been a little miffed with the long wait for version 4, which was announced over a year ago and yet still doesn't have a firm release date, but in the meantime the latest offering (version 3.2.2 as of this writing) works just fine in Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger. And while $34 may seem steep to replace something Apple should have gotten right in the first place, the productivity enhancements Path Finder boasts easily justify the cost (at least in my opinion).

Now, since this isn't really a review of Path Finder, I'll keep my description of it somewhat brief in the interest in getting to the whole replacing the Finder thing. Path Finder, simply put, is a file manager just like the Finder is. While Path Finder can do many (but not all) of the basic things that the Finder can, it goes hog wild from there and packs in so much more than the Finder will ever do. It has an integrated text editor. It sports a built-in Terminal pane. The previews are interactive. It can sort by file type, even in column view. There's a Drop Stack for easily moving files around. And that's not even the tip of the iceberg—we're merely talking a few snowflakes on the top of the tip of the iceberg. There are literally hundreds of features to mess with, and it didn't take very long after first downloading it for Path Finder to become day-to-day Finder. Figure 3 shows a screen capture of the main Path Finder Browser window, so you can at least get an idea of what you're in for.

Figure 3

But don't just take my word for it—download the trial version, which is good for 21 days, and check it out for yourself. If, like me, you're compelled to buy it by the end of day one, and are ultimately interested in seeing the regular ol' Finder as little as humanly possible, please read on.

Over the year (or so) that I've been using Path Finder, I probably tried a dozen (again, or so) techniques for truly replacing the Finder with Path Finder before arriving at the conclusion that it's just not a good idea. Even Cocoatech doesn't bill Path Finder as a true Finder alternative because of the myriad things going on in OS X that route themselves through the Finder in some fashion. So, after scouring the Web for answers and enduring many trials and tribulations that involved everything from packing the Finder into a DMG archive and hiding it away in the bowels of my hard drive to performing a little surgery on Path Finder's innards to fool other programs into thinking it's the real Finder, I've settled on a pretty simple method that doesn't require any real heavy lifting to implement, yet still manages to work great. Here are the steps:

1. Launch Path Finder, hit Command+, (comma) to open the Preferences, and select the General icon.
2. Make sure that the Launch Path Finder automatically after log in and Quit the Finder automatically at launch boxes are checked (fig 4). I'm not sure this step is absolutely necessary, but it doesn't hurt as a redundant measure.

Figure 4

3. Close the Preferences window, and then hit Command+N to open a new Path Finder Browser window (if one isn't already open, that is).
4. Navigate to where you put your Path Finder application (I'll assume the Applications folder; adjust as necessary if you've put it somewhere else).
5. Open up Path Finder's Terminal drawer by clicking on the arrow at the bottom of the Browser window (fig. 5). Don't worry if you're not comfortable with the Terminal; what we're doing here is pretty harmless. That said, though, do so at your own risk!

Figure 5

6. Type defaults write com.apple.loginwindow Finder into the Terminal window. Make sure to put a space after Finder.
7. Drag the Path Finder application into the Terminal window. This will put the Terminally-correct name for Path Finder automatically into the window to complete the command. For the record, the whole command should now read: defaults write com.apple.loginwindow Finder /Applications/Path\ Finder.app.
8. Hit Return to execute the command, and then click the arrow again to close the Terminal drawer.

When you next log in, Path Finder should start up in place of the Finder, and you'll be ready to rock. Now, If you ever need to revert back, repeat steps 3-5, substituting /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app in place of the path to Path Finder in step 6. Alternately, if you have Developer Tools installed, you can open up the com.apple.loginwindow.plist file (located in your ~/Library/Preferences folder) in the Property List Editor and simply delete the Finder node. Logout, log back in, and the Finder should once again be center stage.

There's one little potentially nagging issue, however. You may want to enable Path Finder's Desktop (pull down the Path Finder menu and select Show/Hide Path Finder Desktop to turn it on and off). Running Path Finder's desktop on top of the regular Finder desktop can sometimes cause problems, like the icons on Path Finder's desktop and the icons on the Finder's desktop superimposed on top of each other. Also, using the Finder desktop icons will open drives and folders in the Finder, which we don't want. What we need is to make the Finder desktop go away, which fortunately for us is easy to do. Once again, we'll turn to TinkerTool for help. Here's what to do:

1. Launch TinkerTool, and click the Finder icon.
2. Check the "Disable Desktop Features" box (fig. 6).
3. Hit the Relaunch Finder button.

Figure 6

That's it. The Finder desktop will be disabled, and no more dueling desktops.

Sure, there are other ways to do replace the Finder with Path Finder, some of which will also work just fine, but can involve a lot more dirty work. It took some time and experimentation, but the best solution (for my situation, anyway) eventually rose to the top, with the added bonus of it being one of the simpler methods I've tried. The upshot of all this is that Path Finder will now launch on system startup instead of the Finder, but the Finder will still be available when it's needed. In my case, I periodically use the Finder's Get Info functions, the built-in Slideshow feature (in Tiger, anyway), and the occasional window-based Spotlight search, so it's handy to still have the Finder hanging around and immediately available. Plus, the overall system hasn't been fundamentally altered, so when updates come along (or anything else that depends on the Finder being intact), there won't be any worries about having to undo anything before an update. The bottom line is that there can be a peaceful coexistence going on between the Finder and Path Finder, and with the help of Drag Thing's exclude list in the Process Dock, I can hardly tell when, or sometimes even if, the Finder is running.

So there you have it, folks. Path Finder can be my Finder of choice, while the real Finder can still stick around and do its thing when needed. Hopefully, Apple will eventually provide a more mature Finder in a future version of Mac OS X, but for those of us who don't want to wait, the future is now.

Filed under: Feature on October 26th, 2005

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