With the recent focus on Default Folder X’s integration with Path Finder, I’ve been fielding a number of questions about how to make Default Folder X open folders in Path Finder instead of the Finder.
Using Path Finder instead of the Finder for all apps
The first, simplest answer is that Default Folder X uses your “default file browser” when opening folders. If you set your default file browser to be Path Finder, selecting a folder from Default Folder X’s menus will open it in Path Finder. This will also make all other apps on your Mac use Path Finder for their “Reveal in Finder” commands.
“But how the heck do I set Path Finder as my default file browser?” you say. Well, I’m glad you asked! It’s easy – there’s a setting in your Path Finder preferences:
Using Path Finder instead of the Finder – but just for Default Folder X
If you’d rather make this apply only to Default Folder X, you can set Default Folder X’s “fileViewer” preference in Terminal with this command:
defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX5 fileViewer com.cocoatech.PathFinderNote that if you’re using the Setapp version of Path Finder, you should replace ‘com.cocoatech.PathFinder’ with ‘com.cocoatech.PathFinder-setapp’. To tell Default Folder X to go back to using the Finder instead of Path Finder, just replace ‘com.cocoatech.PathFinder’ with ‘com.apple.finder’.
Toggling between Path Finder and Finder on the fly
And finally, if you want to get really fancy and sometimes have Default Folder X open folders in the Finder and sometimes in Path Finder, you can set up an AppleScript to toggle back and forth. Attaching a script like this to a keyboard shortcut using Peter Lewis’ amazing Keyboard Maestro app makes it super-easy:
-- set the 'currentViewer' variable to the current fileViewer setting
set currentViewer to do shell script "defaults read com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX5 fileViewer"
-- now switch to whichever fileViewer is currently not in use
if currentViewer is "com.apple.finder" then
do shell script "defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX5 fileViewer com.cocoatech.PathFinder"
else
do shell script "defaults write com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderX5 fileViewer com.apple.finder"
end if
