It seems like at random a couple times a month Finder will forget the custom settings I've set for viewing. The window size, icon and text size, and even background get reset.
Any ideas? It mostly seems to happen when I use directories on an external HDD... I've done permission repairs, cleaned caches, checked for bad sectors and always the drive comes out tip-top.
View attachment 947045
It may be that
owner:group settings on the external drive — here, “External HD” — are not the same as they may be were it on an internal directory on that particular Mac (i.e., your home directory, such as
/Users/nikki/ or whatever you log in with).
If this is the case, it’s possible you may not have
owner:group write access to the invisible files inside “External HD” — specifically, the
.DS_Store files stored within each directory. They may be set to something like
root:wheel or something other than your admin name.
You should be able to verify this on your external drive via Terminal and running a '
cd /Volumes/External\ HD/' (without the quotes) and then '
ls -la' to list what comes up for the invisible
.DS_Store file on that main HDD directory (or checking out the same for the sub-directories where you’re having these problems). From the looks of your screencaps, you may have a
/Volumes/External\ HD/Movies/ sub-directory.
If the
.DS_Store file there is set to something like
root:wheel and not something like
admin:staff or
nikki:nikki or similar, then there are two things you could try:
1) The quick-and-dirty: using Terminal and from that sub-directory where you’re having problems, delete the .DS_Store file with a '
rm .DS_Store' command. (If it says “permission denied”, it may require you to run this command as '
sudo rm .DS_Store' and enter your password). Then, go back to Finder, open that directory, set it up the way you want it, and then run a Cmd-J on that window to make sure that “Always open in icon view” is not selected. Doing this will create a new .DS_Store file whose file permissions should be newly set to your login (and giving you write access).
2) The more thorough: you may want to run a '
sudo chown -R [owner:group] /Volumes/External\ HD/' for that external HDD for all files and directories to share the same
owner:group you have for your home directory — with the same read-write-execute (rwx) settings as, say, your home directory. First, enter '
sudo chown -R admin:staff /Voiumes/External\ HD/', let it run to completion (probably a few seconds to a minute or two), and then run a '
sudo chmod -R 775 /Volumes/External\ HD/' and also let it run to completion (
775 for rwx access for owner (i.e., admin), rwx access for group (i.e., staff), and rx access for everyone else). This should allow you to change directory settings for any directory on the External HD via Finder, and it should remember those settings.
