{"id":28242,"date":"2020-02-26T15:48:05","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T20:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=28242"},"modified":"2023-02-10T10:44:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T15:44:39","slug":"what-you-see-in-the-finder-should-always-be-correct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/26\/what-you-see-in-the-finder-should-always-be-correct\/","title":{"rendered":"What You See in the Finder Should Always Be Correct"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Gruber<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

I know from talking to Arment privately that about 30 seconds after he took the screenshot, the Inspector updated to show the actual folder size. But that’s still very<\/em> wrong. The Finder should never<\/em> show inaccurate information regarding the state of the file system. Never.<\/p>\n

This is the sort of problem in recent versions of MacOS that clearly isn’t getting enough attention within Apple. John Moltz and I discussed this on yesterday’s episode of my podcast<\/a>, and Moltz mentioned a similar problem I’ve seen too: you put some large files in the Trash, then empty the Trash, and the available space shown in Finder windows (View → Show Status Bar) doesn’t change at all<\/em> for an indeterminate amount of time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Remember how Windows had a Refresh command, but Macs didn’t need one?<\/p>\n\n

The free space issue dates to at least High Sierra. And, starting with Mojave, I’ve been having all sorts of problems with Finder showing stale information: incorrect metadata, continuing to show files that were already deleted, and failing to show new files. Sometimes I can click on a file or folder to refresh the display. Other times, it gets stuck showing hours-old filesystem state, and I reboot.<\/p>\n\n

Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Unpopular opinion: APFS is a disaster on the Mac<\/p>\n

1) Almost impossible to get accurate free space on a disk
\n2) Super fast HFS FSCatalogSearch file system search is gone
\n3) Bizarre long delays in moving files to the Trash<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I think “disaster” is going too far, and there have been benefits. But it’s true that some basic stuff just doesn’t work as well since the switch to APFS.<\/p>\n\n

Maxwell Swadling<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Free space is my big missing feature. You can’t copy a file to an APFS partition that is bigger than true free space but smaller than available space. I have to use an external drive to work with final cut \/ large videos<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tom Harrington<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

When my Mac tells me I can’t download a new Xcode because there isn’t enough room, but then Finder says there’s like 10x more space than I need, something is not working right.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Someone said that going to System Information: Storage Management triggers something that updates available free space everywhere, including Finder and Disk Utility. I’ll try that the next time I think the numbers are wrong, but of course this should happen automatically.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n