Path Finder videos
Recent user activities on Path Finder
- headlines added Path Finder as alternative(s) to Index File Manager
- JWvWijngaarden thinks Total Commander is an alternative to Path Finder
- richen added Path Finder as alternative(s) to Camelot File Manager
I agree PF being a better replacement for the Finder and having enjoyed 7th version I can safely say that putting a 8th beta version on the market and then gradually work out bugs was a bad idea. bugs or no bugs (that's what users are there for ;)) functionality should not diminish from previous version. I am talking about small stuff like rudimentary key shortcuts, but still. Happy the project continuous though.
With version 6, they really pulled it together. Version 5 had similar tools, but just wasn't solid. By the way -- I haven't had the problems of the previous reviewer. PF works fine on my Macbook Pro, mountain lion.
PF is a very deep application with lots of configuration options. I've been using it now for about 18 months. I think it took me a year to really appreciate it. In part because the documentation is not as deep as the application. And in part because it just takes awhile for PF's extra capabilities to gradually seep into your brain and workflow.
When I'm working intensely on a project, I'll set up a string of tabs to different folders of the project, so I can jump around quickly. I wish that could be automated -- set up batch-o-tabs1 for project 1, batch-o-tabs2 for project 2 .... Maybe it can and I haven't figured that out yet. But I have Keyboard Maestro, and I should just take the time and set up sets of tabs for each project.
I typically have Recent Folders in the left drawer and Preview on the right drawer.
Features I use a lot:
Filter by Name --> Quick! Filter out everything in this folder besides the excel files in this folder so I can find the data I'm using for the analysis. Or show me all the PDF files.
Recent Folders in the left drawer. Constantly using this.
Copy Path -- Give me the full Unix path to this file or folder. When I'm doing statistical programming in R, and need to point at a data file that's somewhere else
Best batch file rename I've seen. You can chain together multiple steps, including RegEx renames and sequential numbers.
Their main Find window took me a while to master. What I do now is navigate in the normal PF file window to the folder (and subs) that I want to search. THEN Find. One of the choices will be to search within the current folder. That works well.
I occasionally use the side by side (split) window. Occasionally use the temporary copy target. I don't use either as much as I thought i would -- usually just use tabs or the recent folders etc. But sometimes they're the best way.
One last thought -- Moom and PF have trouble. PF must have to bend the official OS definition of windows and such to have all those little drawers. So Moom says move window and change size, and the window gets messed up - if the drawers are open. I've told the Moom folks and it doesn't seem like they can fix it. But now -- HMMM -- I realize how to fix it -- use Keyboard Maestro to: 1) close the drawers, then 2) issue the Moom command -- then 3) reopen the drawers. OK, it's a hack, but it should work. [if it doesn't, i'll let you know]
It will be interesting to see which of their interface features get incorporated into the next Mac OS (Maverick). But I'm pretty confident that PF will still be one of my standard tools.
[Edited by rs123, October 18]
[Edited by rs123, October 18]
Up until version 7 I was a big fan of Path Finder – it offered a strikingly feature-rich and user-configurable alternative to Apple's Finder. But then version 8 came out, and it was almost literally disastrous: no meaningful new features to speak of, and old features that were either removed (like an easily-configurable and hidable sidebar), or so degraded in terms of quality (for instance, their innovative Drop Stack – which used to serve as a kind of temporary holding pen for items drawn from many disparate folders which you could then gather together for depositing into a new folder – lost the ability to stay open and fully displayed between uses) as to not be worthwhile anymore. Version 9 was a partial recovery from version 8 in a dead-cat-bounce kind of way, but it's buggy as hell, subjecting users to frequent app crashes and innumerable irritating requests to report what went wrong so that the coders can ignore the feedback and not fix the bugs.
Very capable replacement for Apple's very limited Finder. The first application I install on a macOS system, after The Unarchiver.
Awesome Finder replacement - unfortunately, the current version (8.3.3) is showing some issues.
It's freezing again and again and again when you use it.
It has a great functionality but with all this freezes it is absolutely unusable.
Since the day of my moving to Mac, I was dreaming about something like TC.
I bought Pathfinder, I've tried MUcommander and lots of other apps, but all of them seemed to me as a miserable alternative to beloved TC.
It's still the best solution to TC on OSX.
Reply written over 8 years ago
Path Finder doesn't replace Finder as the default file browsing utility on OS X. When you need to open a file in an application, you'll still get a Finder window. If you click the "Open in Finder" button in folders on your dock, you'll still get a Finder window. Path Finder is just a standalone file browsing app, which annoys me. I really wish it would become the default file browser upon install, since it's a lot better than Finder.
UPDATE: This problem can be partially remedied by opening preferences window for Path Finder and going to "Reveal Preferences". There, you can set Path Finder as the default file viewer. However, you'll still have to use Finder when you're opening a file in an application.