The setting your refer to, is stored in a hidden Finder file called .DS_STORE
This file is obviously overwritten by your friend’s Mac who obviously uses different settings.
As far as I know, there’s no way (other than perhaps making the file .DS_STORE read only in the USB so your friend’s Mac cannot write the “new annoying settings” to it).
You’ll need to jump into the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
Connect your USB Drive, open Terminal.
In Terminal, type:
cd /Volumes
ls
You should see your own Macintosh HD (or whatever name your internal drive(s) have) and the USB drive (with the name it might have).
Cd into the USB drive like:
cd MyUSBDrive
if the drive has spaces in its name, you must enclose it between quotes
For example:
cd “My Strange USB”
Once in there, you can perform an ‘ls’ to view the contents of the USB. Do that to make sure it’s the right one. Else go back to cd /Volumes and start over :)
Now adjust the settings in the finder the way you want them.
Done?
Now to change the permissions in the USB drive:
sudo chmod 444 .DS_Store
NOTE: The above command might ask you for your password, that is ok. The password won’t be seen when you type it. Just type your password and press enter. Remember the commands in Terminal are case sensitive.
What does that do?: chmod is a command that changes the permissions of files and/or directories. In this case, since the file is a hidden file from the finder, we have to do the job from the terminal (which can always see hidden things). The numbers (444) are read only for everybody.
If you don’t know what chmod does or how it works (or why 444) I recommend you take a look at the help (man page) for the command. In Terminal type:
man chmod
Will this work?
To be honest, I don’t know. I believe it will, but I’m not sure if ACLs are preserved in USB devices. If the USB is formatted with FAT32 (they usually are so Windows can read/write) the above might not work.
Other than that, there’s no magical way to tell finder do this, and do it this way. Because if there’s a .DS_Store file, Finder will read settings from there.
I was so sick of this, so I decided to write a fix once and for all.
You can use the following AppleScript to resize the column widths when you notice the column is too wide. It works by resizing the Finder window really large, then back to it's original size, triggering a fluid layout resize.
tell application "Finder"
tell the front Finder window
-- get the current bounds of the finder window
set b to the bounds
-- create a really wide window
set the bounds to {item 1 of b, item 2 of b, 3000, item 4 of b}
-- set window back to its original size
set the bounds to b
end tell
end tell
This will probably be most useful if bound to a keyboard shortcut, I personally bound it to CMD + E using BetterTouch Tool.
If you're after more detailed information regarding this, you can head over to my blog post about it here: https://christianvarga.com/fix-finder-name-column-width-bug-osx-mavericks/
Best Answer
In column view in the Finder, you can resize columns by positioning the mouse pointer over over the thin line that separates column panes, and dragging it to the left to make it narrower or to the right to make it wider.
To make the Finder remember the new width, hold down the option key(⌥) while dragging the pane separator to the desired width.
The best documentation I can find on this from Apple alludes to the fact that holding down option resizes "all columns at once" but does not explicitly say that this makes the change persistent.