This has bothered me since transitioning to OSX. Why isn’t there any way to permanently lock in my “view options” for every window, including new ones? I want every open window to show as a “list,” with the same options checked. You’d think that the “all windows” button would do that, but that’s not the way it works.
This has bothered every Mac user I’ve ever known since there’s been a Mac operating system (and not just “X”, either). The guys in Cupertino just don’t seem to like list view. It’s pretty easy to make folders always open in column view, and it’s pretty easy to make folders always open in icon view, but list view? Hmmph!
The official procedure is like this:
Open a window to a folder. Make sure you don’t have any other window also opened to that folder.
Set the folder’s view to list view.
Go to View Options from the View menu. Click the radio button at the top for “All windows”. Set the desired icon size, colums you want, etc.
Do not navigate away using the nav buttons at the top of the windows. Instead, be sure to close this window.
Now go to the Finder menu and pick preferences. Under “General”, make sure “Open new windows in column view” is unchecked.
Now, that should make new windows to folders for which you haven’t set the View to something else default to List View.
Except that it doesn’t work for removable media or server folders/volumes. Or sometimes it just doesn’t work.
The proper way to do this is to just use a replacement program instead of OS X’s Finder. Unfortunately, Finder is a mishmash of crazy views, and is not consistent at all.
Such as Pathfinder - an excellent “finder replacement”. I use it in the same way many people use “Windows Explorer” on Windows - to easily manager files.