Mac OS X’s Finder: Another problem in List View

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
June 3rd, 2003 • 6:27 pm

This one is another one in the list of small things that Apple so far has inexplicably failed to fix in Mac OS X.

If you have a Finder window in List view mode in Mac OS X, and you click on the name of a file or folder in the list, the Finder selects the item, and, after a fraction of a second, it makes the name editable. On the other hand, if you click on the icon of the item, the Finder just selects it.

This is the standard behaviour, and it is no different from what used to happen in the classic Mac OS.

What is different, however, is that, when the name of the item is editable, the cmd-delete shortcut to put the item in the Trash does not work.

This only affects the List view mode in Mac OS X. If an item is selected in a list in Columns view or in Icons view and the name is editable, cmd-Delete still works. If an item is selected in a list in List view in Mac OS 9 and the name is editable, cmd-delete still works. But it doesn’t work in List view in Mac OS X.

It is particularly annoying because of the standard behaviour described above, which means that, most of the time, when you click on an item in List view, its name becomes editable by default, even if you don’t need it to become editable. (You have to make sure you click on its icon, which is much smaller than the name, in order to avoid it.) In other words, if you have a Finder window in List view and you click on an item to select it and put it away by using cmd-delete, it won’t work unless you’ve been careful to click on the icon rather than the name.

Of course, the workaround is simple: just hit the Enter key to make the name non-editable again. Then cmd-delete will work. But there is just no way that you can expect the user to remember to use this workaround in this particular view mode, when things work perfectly fine and as expected in the other view modes.

I filed a Bug Reporter report on this a long time ago, and the bug still hasn’t been fixed.


2 Responses to “Mac OS X’s Finder: Another problem in List View”

  1. jerru says:

    I can’t seem to edit the file names as you say is possible above. i’m running panther. i click on the name and can’t change it!

    however, cmd-delete works

  2. Pierre Igot says:

    Can’t say for sure why you can’t edit the name. A permissions issue? Try repairing permissions with Disk Utility. And check the permissions for the files or folders in question.

    Apple did fix the problem identified in the entry above in Panther. In other words, if you are in List view mode, and the name of the selected file is editable, cmd-delete works just fine.

    However, they have not restored the exact same behaviour as in OS 9. If you click once on the name of a file that’s not already selected, it doesn’t make it editable after a short delay. You always have to do two actions (click and then click again, or click and then press the Return or Enter key) if you want to edit the name of a file in List view.

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