Macos – Forcing Lion Finder to open in List View

findermacososx lion

One of my favorite features in Snow Leopard was the fact that Finder would always open a new window in the "List View". Lion instead opens the multi-column view by default.

Is there any way I can make the Finder window open in "List View" by default?

Best Answer

I remember doing this before on SL. I haven't tested this yet on Lion.

  • First, recursively delete all .DS_Store files. These files contains per-folder settings. According to this guide from Adobe:

  1. Select Applications > Utilities to launch Terminal.

  2. Enter the following UNIX command:

    sudo find / -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} \;

  3. When prompted for a password enter your Mac OS X Administrator password.

  • Restart

  • Now you have one of two options:

    1. In Terminal type: defaults write com.apple.Finder FXPreferredViewStyle Nlsv (The four letter codes for the view modes are icnv, Nlsv, clmv and Flwv.)

    2. Open the finder windows and cmd J to open view pref. Change the setting to Always open in list view and then use as default button at the bottom

Related Question