MacOS – On Mavericks, in the Finder in List view, column widths keep changing

finderfoldersmacosplist

I'm on OS X Mavericks. In Finder, I use the "List" view. In this view, since upgrading to Mavericks, the column widths keep changing. Basically, the Name column expands to fill the window up, when you resize a Finder window. But worse of all, they are then fixed at that new width. So for instance, I open a folder, such as ~/Downloads, then increase the width horizontally to the right. I close this, then open ~/, which is the original width size. I then open the ~/Downloads folder, and now the columns are wider than the window.

Is there any way to stop this from happening? Does this only happen to me? I already tried resetting my com.apple.finder.plist file, but since Mavericks now caches plist files, the file just gets re-created instantly after deleting it, so that doesn't work anymore.

Best Answer

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/

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