Default Folder X 5.7.8 is available, largely thanks to a single individual. Default Folder X user Andrea Bornstein discovered that browsing Time Machine backups caused Default Folder X’s Finder-click feature* to stop working.
I’ve been getting sporadic reports of Finder-click failing for quite a while, but was never able to isolate the cause of it. I tried numerous fixes based on the information I could collect from people that reported the issue (and discovered a few weird edge cases along the way), but the reports kept coming. I didn’t know how to reproduce the problem on a Mac here, so I never had a way to test locally. And people that reported it said it would come and go, so I couldn’t rely on them to test potential fixes either. Very frustrating. 😡
Then Andrea’s careful observation gave me a reliable way to make it happen, and I could finally test and debug a true fix. Hurray for smart, detail-oriented customers! 😎
And what an odd bug it was (and still is) – not in Default Folder X, but in the Finder. Default Folder X uses the macOS Accessibility API to gather information from the Finder – it’s essentially a way to programmatically say “hey Finder, give me a list of your windows”. Normally the Finder happily complies, but if an app asks that question after you’ve been browsing Time Machine backups, the Finder just says “nothing to see here!” Luckily, there’s another way to coax that info out of the Finder, so I’ve sidestepped the bug entirely while waiting for a fix from Apple (the bug is filed as FB12199998).
So – all you folks who restore files and folders from Time Machine on a regular basis, you can reliably use Finder-click without resorting to hidden settings in Default Folder X. I’m sorry it took so long to get to the root of the problem, but honestly, it’s a pretty weird one.
And in other news, version 5.7.8 of Default Folder X also adds badged icons to the Finder-click interface. If you’re running ForkLift or Path Finder alongside the Finder, you’ll see an icon indicating which of those apps “owns” the window you’re currently hovering the mouse over. Like the ForkLift 4 icon on the folder in the screenshot above.
Choose “Check for Update” from Default Folder X’s menu in your menu bar to get the update, or download it from the Default Folder X “What’s New” page. Oh, and the update’s free, as usual.
* For those that don’t know, Default Folder X’s Finder-click feature is available in the Open and Save dialogs of any app. While in the file dialog, you can click on any open Finder window behind it, and the file dialog will switch to show the contents of that folder. This works with ForkLift and Path Finder as well as the Finder.
Version 5.6.5 of Default Folder X is now available for download. It includes a number of improvements and bug fixes.
First, Default Folder X now recognizes files that you upload using a web browser or attach to an email as “recently used,” even if they haven’t actually been modified or opened. They’ll appear in DFX’s Recent Files menu so you can quickly get back to them.
Also, this release improves the way it handles Save As dialogs in Big Sur and Monterey. When a Save dialog is presented as a sheet, Default Folder X will emphasize the Finder windows behind it by drawing them darker as you mouse over them, but will leave the title-bar area of the sheet’s parent window unemphasized. This is done so you can still drag the window by its title bar to move it (and its attached Save dialog) around on the screen. It looks like this:
The “Downloads” window in the Finder is shown darkened behind a Save As sheet
Clear as mud, right? I’ll be the first to admit that it looks damned weird, but given that the Big Sur / Monterey implementation of sheets is a giant step backward in usability, I didn’t have a lot to work with. This method gives you the best access to your Finder windows while still allowing you to move the window (even though the new sheet UI implies that you can’t move it by graying it out).
And while we’re discussing Finder-click, version 5.6.5 fixes a problem with the way Default Folder X tracked the windows of Path Finder and ForkLift. They sometimes wouldn’t be recognized by the Finder-click feature because, in my drive to get the best performance, there was a case where I just optimized them out of existence. That’s been corrected.
Various bugs have also been fixed in the way Default Folder X handles Finder comments, cloud-synced folders, the icon of the Finder itself, and Save dialogs in macOS Sierra.
Release notes and download links are on the Default Folder X release page. Or if you’re already running Default Folder X, just choose “Check for Update” from its menu in your menu bar.
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:
Turn on this checkbox and you’re done.
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:
Note 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
Version 5.5.9 of Default Folder X is available. One very significant improvement is its “reaction time” to bring up its controls when an Open or Save dialog comes up on the screen.
Under the hood, Default Folder X relies on notifications from macOS to alert it to the presence of a file dialog, and then queries the system to determine the dialog’s characteristics (whether it’s an Open or Save dialog, whether it’s a sheet or window, which folder it’s displaying, etc). In Big Sur, the system’s responses have become slower under some circumstances, resulting in a longer delay before Default Folder X’s controls appear around Open and Save dialogs. Version 5.5.9 streamlines the queries that Default Folder X makes to the system, resulting in a much quicker response after it’s notified that an Open or Save dialog has popped up – it’s nearly twice as fast as previous versions.
And in the process of analyzing Default Folder X’s performance to make it more responsive, I found some inefficiencies in the way it collects and organizes its lists of the windows open in the Finder (and Path Finder and ForkLift, if you’re running those apps). Those inefficiencies have been eliminated as well, reducing Default Folder X’s CPU usage and further improving its response time.
There are also a few fixes in the Finder-click feature to work around a bug in the macOS Finder: Default Folder X will no longer display some tabs of a Finder window as separate windows when the Finder returns incorrect data. In addition, you should now be able to reliably traverse DFX’s menus with the keyboard, and selecting the default folder item in the Favorites menu will work consistently.
For folks that use Path Finder (an excellent Power User’s alternative to the Finder), you’ll be happy to know that Path Finder is now a fully supported alternative when you’re using Default Folder X. Anywhere that DFX integrates with the Finder, it will now use Path Finder if it’s running.
New in this release is the ability to add Default Folder X’s shortcut buttons to Path Finder’s toolbars. This lets you quickly pop up Default Folder X’s menus or slide out its drag-and-drop drawer by clicking a button in the toolbar.
Default Folder X also now “sees” all of the tabs in Path Finder’s windows. Every folder that you have in a Path Finder window will be shown in Default Folder X’s “Finder Windows” menu and highlighted by it’s Finder-click feature in Open and Save dialogs.
For those of you that _don’t_ use Path Finder, this release delivers a bunch of important bug fixes, so please don’t pass it up. Chief among them are fixes for the occasional disappearing cursor in Open and Save dialogs (finally), better reliability when switching between folders, and the elimination of a hang that could occur as Default Folder X was launching.
Download links and a full list of changes are available on the Default Folder X Release Page, or if you’re already running Default Folder X, just choose “Check for Update” from its menu to get the update.
Default Folder X can automatically add buttons to the toolbar in all Finder windows so that you can quickly get to its menus or drawer. I’ve had a number of inquiries from folks that use Path Finder as a replacement for the Finder, and they want those same buttons in their Path Finder toolbars.
Unfortunately, Default Folder X can’t automate this, so you’ll need to add the buttons manually. Here’s how to do it in Path Finder 9:
Default Folder X 5.5.7 (and later) directly supports adding its buttons to the Path Finder toolbar if you’re using Path Finder 10.0.4 or higher. Just turn on the checkboxes in your Default Folder X preferences to add them to the Finder toolbars and it’ll automatically add them to Path Finder too.
