Default Folder X 5.2: color icons, better iCloud support, UI improvements and more

Version 5.2 of Default Folder X is now available here. By popular demand, I’m bucking the Apple monochrome-file-dialog theme and letting you choose color toolbar icons if you want ’em. While that’s not a big deal to some people, it makes clicking on the correct icon easier for many folks. It also just adds a little more color to brighten your day 🙂

Default Folder X 5.2 is also back in step with Apple’s iCloud Drive ruse. Even though your Desktop and Documents folders aren’t really in your iCloud Drive folder, Default Folder X will pretend they are by showing them there in its menus. And yes, it understands what to do if you turn “Desktop and Documents” off in your iCloud settings, which then actually does put them in your iCloud Drive folder, along with separate Desktop and Documents folders in your Home folder (no, that’s not confusing).

And if you’re running High Sierra, you may have noticed that Default Folder X stopped showing any iCloud items in its Recent Files and Recent Folders menus recently. That’s because Apple has once again hidden your Library folder, and iCloud stuff is actually stashed inside it. Prior to version 5.2, Default Folder X wouldn’t show items in hidden folders because, well, you might not want everyone to see all your hidden stuff, right? Well, now ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ (aka iCloud) is treated specially so that Default Folder X is once again useful in getting to your recently used files and folders, even when they’re on iCloud.

There are also user-experience improvements in 5.2, namely the process of authorizing Default Folder X in the Security & Privacy settings in System Preferences, and the way Default Folder X handles Gatekeeper Path Randomization if you download and launch it in place. And as a bonus, your license information will no longer be randomly forgotten when a bug in macOS stops giving Default Folder X information from its own preference file. My apologies to anyone that’s gotten bitten by that in the past.

Finally, updating will also net you a more capable Compress command, a handful of fixes for bugs, memory leaks and such, and some prettier icons in Default Folder X’s menus. If you’re already running Default Folder X, just choose “Check for Updates” from its menu – or run over to the Default Folder X release page to download a copy to install manually.

2 Responses to “Default Folder X 5.2: color icons, better iCloud support, UI improvements and more”

  1. Thomas Donahue says:

    cannot add Default folder to accessibility list (nor any other program) since I reinstalled Mojave after my data was corrupted (using 10.14.5). Any ideas? I go to Accessbillty, find Default folder in window, choose it, but it doesn’t populate the list

    • Jon says:

      Mojave’s TCC database (which controls all the privacy settings) is scrambled. Sometimes just restarting your Mac will fix it, so please give that a try and then launch Default Folder X again to see if things work as they should.

      If that doesn’t do the trick, please open the Terminal application (it’s in /Applications/Utilities) and paste this line into it:

      sudo tccutil reset Accessibility

      and hit Return after doing so. You’ll be asked for your administrator password to authorize the command.

      Immediately after doing this, restart your Mac. After it finishes restarting, launch Default Folder X again. If the Accessibility pane is still empty, then you’ll have to get more drastic and reset all of the tcc databases (another user had to do this a few weeks ago – it’s annoying because it resets all the permissions, such as access to your Contacts, etc, as well as Accessibility). To do a full reset, open Terminal again and use this command:

      sudo tccutil reset All

      and then restart.

Leave a Reply