Remove Finder from the Application Switcher in Mac OSX

http://blog.joshdzielak.com/blog/2012/02/12/remove-finder-from-the-app-switcher-in-mac-osx/

by dzello • 14 years ago

49 17 14 years ago

blog.joshdzielak.com

But if you're Cmd+Tabbing between your two apps, the Finder is always the 3rd icon and you never get to it.

You'll literally never accidentally tab into the Finder unless you press Cmd+Tab,Tab -- which is awfully hard to do by accident.

The author says Finder "has an insatiable thirst for keystrokes". I say accidentally Cmd+Tabbing into the Finder is one of the strangest complaints about OSX I've ever come across.

dekz• 14 years ago

It can be frustrating when having a minimalist workspace. The frustrations occur from having no Finder windows open and accidentally CMD+Tabbing to it (quickly). Finder doesn't have to be the First item available in the Application switcher either, it is an ordered list from application launch order. (So if Finder crashes and relaunches it can be 2nd).

The potential problematic behaviour comes from the fact that the new lion feature of closing background apps only seems to apply to SOME applications and not all. So quicktime will close when it enters the background with nothing open whereas Finder will not.

dzello2• 14 years ago

(from the author) Can totally understand how for some folks this isn't an issue at all. But for spastic me it was a stubborn one I found myself losing time on. Perhaps in part because I have my repeat rate jacked way up using KeyRemap4Macbook - http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/.

I'd Cmd-Tab my way into Finderland a few times a day and inadvertently trigger new Finder windows instead of new Chrome windows with Cmd+N - stuff like that.

Getting Finder out of the rotation prevents this from happening. While I still might double-tab back to the original window, I usually spot that before too much typing b/c it's where my eyes originally were looking.

And aesthetically I'll always take the less number of icons when I can.

pudquick• 14 years ago

Umm, why not quit it instead?

In Terminal / iTerm2:

defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem 1

Relaunch and now you get a Quit menu (in menubar and in contextual menu on Dock)

Quit it when you don't need it, Dock launch it when you want it back.

stephen_mcd• 14 years ago

Thank you for posting this, it had always bothered me. The other problem I have with the task switcher is switching to minimised applications does nothing. Anyone have a similar fix for that?

Edit: On Lion the path is slightly different from the one in the article, it's /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Info.plist

cleverjake• 14 years ago

hold down option once it is tabbed to and it will unminimize it.

dpcx• 14 years ago

That's cool. But is there a way to make that the default behavior?

dzello2• 14 years ago

Thanks again for the typo catch - I updated the original post to show /System/Library not /Library/System.

m_antis2• 14 years ago

Why do I keep getting the following message when I use sudo?: "You don’t own the file “Info.plist” and don’t have permission to write to it. You can duplicate this document and edit the duplicate. Only the duplicate will include your changes."

I'm running Lion 10.7.3

m_antis2• 14 years ago

Never mind. I was trying to use TextEdit. Using the VI editor works perfectly.

mbrzuzy• 14 years ago

Anyone else have the finder still on the dock as a shortcut and unable to drag off?

yottabyte47• 14 years ago

You cannot remove Finder or Trash from the Dock. (leastways without hacking)

invisiblefunnel• 14 years ago

Looks like the OSX menu bar is lost when all applications are closed.

jackalope• 14 years ago

When I'm using an application that freezes with a spinning pinwheel, I can Cmd + tab to the Finder and get to the Force Quit utility in the Apple menu. While it's true that I can switch to any other running application and do the same, I find it comforting that the Finder will always be there if I have only one app open and it freezes on me.

[Yes, I realize there's also a keyboard shortcut for Force Quit, but I don't know what those symbols even stand for, since they're not on my keyboard (except for that Cmd 4-leaf clover thingy), so I can't type them here, and won't be able to look them up if I'm stuck in a frozen app with no way out.]

There are a lot of reasons to hate the Finder, but I don't feel like this is one of them.

smhinsey• 14 years ago

I've used Macs since OS 8 and I don't quite get the symbols myself. It's command-option-escape, for future reference.

ken• 14 years ago

I've used Macs since System 6, and I can't keep them straight, either.

The weird thing is that Apple's non-US keyboards have (most of) the icons: http://store.apple.com/de/product/MB110DK/B

Remove Finder from the Application Switcher in Mac OSX

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