{"id":50203,"date":"2025-11-26T15:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T20:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=50203"},"modified":"2025-11-26T15:18:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T20:18:25","slug":"viewing-metadata-in-the-finder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/26\/viewing-metadata-in-the-finder\/","title":{"rendered":"Viewing Metadata in the Finder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2025\/11\/19\/viewing-metadata-in-the-finder\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2025\/11\/19\/viewing-metadata-in-the-finder\/\"><p>The Finder can display more information about files than their size and datestamps, and for some types of file can extend to a lot of useful metadata. These are shown in the Preview pane containing the file&rsquo;s QuickLook thumbnail, in the Get Info dialog, and some can be added to the columns shown in List View.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>To a degree, the user <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/guide\/mac-help\/mchl1e4644c2\/mac\">determines which fields are displayed<\/a> in the Information shown in the Preview pane, although Apple doesn&rsquo;t mention the key setting involved. Select the file, ensure the blue text to the right of Information is set to <strong>Show Less<\/strong>, then open its Preview Options using the Finder&rsquo;s View menu.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>It&rsquo;s only when the Preview pane is showing less information that your Preview Options are applied, and they&rsquo;re now used the same for all types of Image.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Unfortunately:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Most of the metadata can&rsquo;t be displayed unless the file is in a folder indexed by Spotlight. It can&rsquo;t even tell you the dimensions of an image.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>With my typical window sizes, there&rsquo;s barely any space below the preview to see the metadata. I like to hide the Quick Actions and Last Opened date, to make more space for what I care about, but this has to be set separately for each type of file. I assume these settings are fragile and will have to be reapplied many times.<\/p><\/li>\n<li>There&rsquo;s no way to adjust the order (like you can in Lightroom). And the order in the Preview Options inspector doesn&rsquo;t fully match the order in the actual Finder window (e.g. Tags is at the top in one and the bottom in the other).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/05\/folder-preview-1-6\/\">Folder Preview 1.6<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Oakley: The Finder can display more information about files than their size and datestamps, and for some types of file can extend to a lot of useful metadata. These are shown in the Preview pane containing the file&rsquo;s QuickLook thumbnail, in the Get Info dialog, and some can be added to the columns shown [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-11-26T20:02:15Z","apple_news_api_id":"c8a83b46-2aa6-4075-8a04-e547852e88b4","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-11-26T20:18:28Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AyKg7RiqmQHWKBOVHhS6ItA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2042,458,30,2742,608,1042],"class_list":["post-50203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-exchangeable-image-file-format-exif","tag-finder","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-metadata","tag-spotlight"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50203"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50216,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50203\/revisions\/50216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}