If you’ve used the Recent Files menu to attach files to email messages in Mail.app, you may have noticed a big problem afterwards. Default Folder X would start ignoring requests to switch to other folders – no matter what you selected from the Favorites or Recent Folders menus, the file dialog wouldn’t go where you asked it to.

Version 5.2.4 fixes this bug – my apologies for letting the problem sneak through the testing process in the first place. Despite having a group of testers hammering on version 5.2.3 for several weeks, this one slipped by because I actually added the bug in the process of fixing another one fairly late in the testing period. Oops 🙁

Anyway, choose “Check for Updates” in your current copy of Default Folder X to have it download the new version, or hop over to the Default Folder X release page for details and download links.

Version 5.2.3 of Default Folder X is available. After many requests from users and a bunch of back and forth with Mudi at BinaryNights, the developer of ForkLift, I’m happy to announce that we’ve got Default Folder X and ForkLift working together!

Default Folder X’s “Finder-click” feature now supports ForkLift (version 3.2.2 or higher). If you’ve got a ForkLift window open on your Desktop, clicking on it while a file dialog is frontmost will switch the file dialog so it shows the contents of the folder in the ForkLift window. And if you want to switch to one of the folders open in another tab of that ForkLift window, Control-click on the window to get a menu of  folders in other tabs. Also, if you select a folder or file from Default Folder X’s menu in your menubar when a file dialog isn’t frontmost, that file or folder will be opened in ForkLift if it’s running.

If you haven’t tried ForkLift yet, hop over to BinaryNights‘ website and download a copy. It’s a great alternative to the Finder, as well as for viewing and manipulating remote files on FTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Google Drive and other servers.

Now back to the changes in Default Folder X 5.2.3…

An enhancement that you probably won’t notice but that makes a big day-to-day difference is a revamping of the code that switches from one folder to another in Open and Save dialogs. I sat down and reconsidered the underlying mechanism, and as a result made it faster, more efficient and more reliable. This also eliminated compatibility issues with Magnet and BetterTouchTool, so it’s a win all around.

There are also bug fixes based on crash logs that have been submitted (yes, I do look at them!) and tech support emails that folks have sent. I got rid of some ugliness in the Folders tab of Default Folder X’s preference window, added AppleScript commands to access recent Finder windows, and enhanced a number of features in little ways.

The official change log is on the Default Folder X release page, along with links to download version 5.2.3.