I have Mac OS 10.7.4 and I'd like Finder to use "Is Folder?" as its first sort criteria, or in other words, group folders before files regardless of the sorting method.
Windows and Linux both do this by default.
How to get Mac OS Finder to group folders together when sorting
findersort
Related Solutions
There's no built in feature in the Finder to achieve that, but with the "plugin" TotalFinder you can get that. It's located under the "Tweaks" tab in the TotalFinder settings.
Edit: There was a screenshot here, but it was out of date. Look at Robsofts answer instead for an up-to-date screenshot!
Because of a lot of complaints of people used to the Windows way, merging folders is now a feature in OSX Lion :
This merge dialog will only show up if:
- destination folder isn't empty
- destination folder contents are different from to be copied one
So the way to merge folders in an officially supported way is to upgrade to Lion :-)
Best Answer
Finder > Preferences > Advanced > Keep folders on top when sorting by name
Before macOS 10.12 Sierra, this wasn't an option.
Before 10.12, Finder just didn't have a "group the folders" at the top/bottom. There are legions of Mac users that put all sorts of characters in their folder names so that they sort above or below when sorted by name.
There are all sorts of hacky ways to manipulate the "kind" strings internally, but then everything is arranged by kind first, and secondarily alphabetically.
If this is a deal breaker - check out the many apps that run in place of the Finder. Here is a query to get you started:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/search?q=finder+replacement