Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard): List view in Finder still doesn’t scroll properly when typing the first few letters of the file name

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
November 20th, 2007 • 3:52 pm

This is a long-standing problem with list view in the Finder that I was hoping would finally get fixed in Mac OS X 10.5. Sadly, it has not been fixed.

I have some folders that contain a really large number of files, like several thousands.

If I open one of these folders in a Finder window in list view sorted by name, by default the list starts with the first batch of files that are at the top of the list in alphabetical order, with nothing selected.

If I then want to directly jump to the part of the list that contains the files whose name starts with “w,” for example, the most intuitive (and convenient) thing to do is to press W on the keyboard.

Pressing W on the keyboard should accomplish two things: It should automatically select the first file in the list whose name starts with a “wand it should automatically scroll down the list so that the file in question appears in the visible portion of the list in the window.

This works fine in Finder windows in list view that contain a limited number of files, like a hundred or so.

But as soon as you have a Finder window with a really large number of files, like several thousands, the Finder fails miserably. It does select the file correctly, but it completely fails to scroll down to the appropriate section of the list. It does not scroll at all. It selects the first file starting with a “w,” but it continues to display the very top of the file list, i.e. the files whose name starts with a number or a punctuation mark or some other character in the lower ASCII range.

If you have the patience, there is actually a trick of sorts to “force” the Finder to scroll down the list. After pressing W to select the first file whose name starts with “w,” if you press the Up and Down cursor keys repeatedly a few times, the Finder gradually condescends to scrolling down the list and eventually displays the section of the list near the file you want to see.

Of course, by pressing the Up and Down cursor keys, you actually change the selection to the file above or below the current selection. But for some reason, this selection change, at the same time, forces the Finder to scroll down the list so that the section where the selection is becomes closer to the visible section of the list in the window.

I say “becomes closer,” because for some unfathomable reason it still takes several successive cursor key strokes to finally get the Finder to scroll all the way down to the desired section. If you only press a cursor key once or twice, the Finder half-heartedly scrolls down by a thousand files or two. But if your list includes 16,000 items, it still takes about ten cursor key strokes to finally force the Finder to scroll all the way down to the appropriate section.

This is rather ridiculous. Of course, there are probably engineers at Apple who would argue that no Mac user in their right mind should have a folder with 16,000 items in it. But where exactly is the law that forbids such a thing? The Finder has no qualms about letting me add 16,000 items to this folder in the first place. So it should be able to display the folder’s contents properly, and all its normal functions should work properly regardless of the number of items involved.

(Please note that I don’t really know what the threshold beyond which the Finder’s list view starts acting up is. Is it 500 files? 1,000 files? 5,000 files? I would try to narrow it down by moving my files around, but trying to move large numbers of files in the Finder is still rather painful in Mac OS X 10.5. It no longer locks up the Finder with the Spinning Beach Ball of Death as it used to do, but it is still a process with plenty of delayed responses that make it a bit dangerous and a test of the user’s patience.)

I should stress that this is a problem that only occurs in list view. With the same folder containing 16,000 items, if I am in column view, a single W keystroke is enough to select the first file in the list whose name starts with “wand to force the Finder to scroll down to the list so that the selected file becomes visible.

So even in Leopard it looks like list view in the Finder in Mac OS X remains the poor second cousin and does not deserve the same level of care and attention to detail as column view on the part of Apple’s Mac OS X engineers.

It’s arbitrary, it’s unfair, and it is sad.


4 Responses to “Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard): List view in Finder still doesn’t scroll properly when typing the first few letters of the file name”

  1. norman says:

    I don’t understand. My list view works !

  2. Pierre Igot says:

    How many items do you have in your folder? I have one with 16,000 items here, and it definitely does not work as expected.

  3. corbin says:

    Have you logged this as a bug? If not, you should!

  4. Pierre Igot says:

    Please see this page about my bug reports.

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