binaryfinderfoldersmacostweaks
The article Force your Mac to sort folders on top of files (windows style), lets the Finder change its sorting order to first show folders and next all files.
This trick doesn't seem to work with Mountain Lion, InfoPlist.strings seems to be a binary file.
Do you know how to edit InfoPlist.strings in Mountain Lion?
In my Downloads stack I don't have this problem. The ordering is correct, i.e. latest download appears at the bottom.
The settings which achieve this are:
Sort by: Date Added
Display as: Stack
View content as: Fan
I hope these settings work for you too.
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:
Best Answer
The
InfoPlist.stringsfile you mention is a binary formatted property list. You can convert and edit these files with developer tools such as plutil.The following article walks through the steps required, Show folders last in Finder.