Organising files
Finder has two stacked systems — grouping and sorting — and mixing them up is why views feel random.
Group By (View → Group By, or the toolbar's circled icon) buckets the window into sections — Kind, Date, Size ranges. Sort By orders items *within* the window or within those groups (hold ⌥ and the Group By menu becomes Sort By).
Group By None + Sort By what-you-want is the predictable configuration; grouped views are where "why is it ordered like this" comes from.
| Question | Sort |
|---|---|
| What just arrived? | Date Added, newest first |
| What was I working on? | Date Modified |
| What is eating space? | Size (needs Calculate all sizes for folders) |
| Where is that type? | Kind |
Date Added vs Date Modified matters: a file downloaded today but written in 2019 tops the first and buries in the second. Downloads wants Date Added; project folders want Modified.
View settings are stored per folder (in .DS_Store). ⌘J → Use as Defaults sets your preferred view globally; Always open in … pins a specific folder's behaviour. When a folder's view seems haunted, ⌘J and reset it.
Right-click the column headers: add Date Added, Size, Kind, Tags. Click any header to sort by it — the fastest sort switch there is. Drag headers to reorder.
Finder → Settings → Advanced → Keep folders on top when sorting by name — the setting Windows switchers miss most, in the place they least expect it.
View settings are per-folder. ⌘J → Use as Defaults applies one configuration everywhere.
Hold Option: the Group By menu turns into Sort By, controlling order within each group.
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