Finder should know what monitor I'm using?

Tech Support
1

I have an M1 MacBook Air that I regularly dock into a 4K monitor. I like the MBA for its portability, and I take it almost everywhere I go. When I’m in my home office, however, I dock it — thank you Anker — and everything goes onto a 4K mounted on a VESA swing arm and I use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. It’s the best of both worlds as far as I am concerned.

Except … Finder is dumb. It seems to me that Finder should know the difference between a 13" screen and a 27" screen and know that windows can, and should be, different sizes.

Or … it could be I am dumb and there is a way to do this, and I do not know about it.

No matter where the dumbness lies, I am hoping for solutions from the MPU hive mind.

2

Idk for sure, but you might be able to use Moom to set an app to open to a different window size depending on the monitor you’re using.

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3

I’m afraid you can’t do this with Finder, but if you have Keyboard Master, you can use display layout trigger to adjust the position and size of Finder windows automatically.

4

Will this work with app windows as well? Finder windows are the least of my worries.

5

I’ll look into moom. Thanks!

6

Last I looked Moom had a very generous trial period.

7

Almost any software with a window can use this scheme, but it should be noted that generally you can only modify the current window and new windows that will be opened later. If you want to modify all open windows, you may need some scripting knowledge or slightly complicated skills : )

8

Don’t give up on Moom right away if you find it a bit difficult. It is powerful, flexible, and subtle. Even after using it for years, I continue to tinker with it and to find better ways of doing things with it.

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9

Once upon a time, I would recommend Stay, by Cordless Dog. I still use it and it still mostly works (it sometimes needs to be manually invoked) but it seems to be abandonware. I’ve tried to contact the developer on several occasions with no reply. It was last updated in 2021.

Moom appears to have similar functionality, and while I use Moom as my window management tool and can recommend it highly, I’ve not used it for your use case.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

10

Realize that the desktops are part of Finder. Click on the desktop where you want the Finder window to open and the Finder window will open there.

11

This isn’t about multiple desktops. Rather, this is about Finder recognizing when the size of the desktop has changed. (Docked versus undocked, as it were.)

12

Finder remembers the last location and size a window for the folder was and uses that. As you have found out, it doesn’t care about the size of the desktop. Yes, can be a nuisance.

13

Finder does not do that for me. I often open folders. Size them as I desire. Close the window. And the next time it opens it is back to the original, not desired, size.

14

Exercise:

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Select a folder and open using context menu “Open in New Window” or ⌃O
  3. Move the window to a new location and resize.
  4. Close all the Finder windows.
  5. Open Finder
  6. Select the folder and open using context menu “Open in New Window” or ⌃O.
  7. The window should open and be sized like it was at the end of step 3.

If you open the folder window any other way after step 3, such as just double-clicking on the folder, it will forget the location.

15

Well that sure limits the usefulness, as double clicking on a folder is my most common way to open a folder. I suspect this is true for many folks.

Two other comments for those who may be playing along at home:

When I invoke the contextual menu the option is “Open in New Tab”. Holding down the option (⌥) key shows “Open in New Window”. And it the folder to be opened is on the desktop the option is simply “Open”.

And it is the keyboard shortcut command O (⌘ O) and not control O (^ O) that opens the folder.

Following the steps @tomalmy provides, with changes as noted, does preserve the folder size and location.

16

It might be the Finder Settings checkbox “Open folders in tabs instead of new windows” which for me is not checked as I don’t like tabs. I also found out that I had manually bound in System Settings ⌃O to Open in New Window, so ignore that instruction. You can tell I really want to open in new windows!

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