Except you can’t really replace Finder, so you end up using Finder and Path Finder.
But Path Finder has a lot of useful tools, bells, and whistles that make it much more powerful. Think “Finder Pro” if Apple had ever decided to do anything with Finder after, say, 2006.
One of my most-commonly-used features is the ability to have two “views” side-by-side to move things between folders. You can approximate this with two Finder windows, but Path Finder is much better at it.
If I could completely replace Finder with it, I’d love it, but since I can’t, I end up using Finder most of the time because inertia.
HUGE file previews that you can actually copy/paste from (unlike the pop-up view in finder)
Batch file rename
Dual-pane view
The Drop Stack
Sidebar showing my most recently opened 10 folders and 10 files
Built-in Terminal app
Text file editor.
If it had the most recent features of Dropbox integrated, I’d never use Finder. But I live in Dropbox, so it’s probably 50/50 usage between Finder and Path Finder.
Good that that works for you. For me, if I didn’t already own most of the SetApp apps I’d want to use I’d have jumped on it and stayed there from day 1. I am a registered owner of these SetApp apps, which I also use:
Gemini, iStat Menus, Marked, BetterZip, Elmedia Player, NotePlan, Yoink, BetterTouchTool, Bartender, TextSoap, Forklift, Ulysses, Mindnode & iThoughtsX. I couldn’t imagine using my Mac without a few of those (Bartender, Yoink, Ulysses, MindNode/iThoughtsX), and while a couple are only used sporadically, there are additional SetApp apps I could see myself using too. Great service with high-quality apps.
This is right in the case of Setapp, at least for me. I’m using a bunch of stuff I never heard of and would never have tried if I didn’t buy the Setapp subscription back when it helped me avoid a Ulysses subscription. I no longer use Ulysses, but I use…
MarsEdit is fantastic. I bought the upgrade from the developer to support him, but I highly recommend it. His support for custom fields is outstanding - so if you have a Wordpress setup with custom fields, you can enter the text for those fields directly in the MarsEdit post editor. For example, I have a custom field for a “Player of the Game” on my local sports website, and when I post a game summary, I simply enter the copy for the “Player of the Game” sidebar in MarsEdit, and my Wordpress template gets that copy where it needs to go without logging into the Wordpress back end.
I just used PDF Squeezer for the first time in a long time, and I think they’ve had a UI redesign that has made the various compression levels much easier to find. I tried it out and it did an amazing job. Took a 15MB PDF down to under 1 MB, and I can’t tell the difference.
It appears to default to the highest settings, which I’m sure can make the most dramatic size decreases, but also may have undesirable results, depending.
I also like that it will show you how much you can save by each setting, before you even do the ‘squeeze’.
I held off on Setapp for a long time because I didn’t want another monthly subscription, but once it started getting enough of the apps I was already paying for, it became a money-saver. That said here’s what I have installed:
Bartender
Batteries
Beamer
BetterTouchTool
Betterzip
Cappuccino
CleanMyMac X
CleanShot X
Donnie
Dropshare
Dropzone
Elmedia Player
Espresso
FontMagico Pro
Goldie App
Luminar Flex
MacPilot
Marked
MarsEdit
MetaImage
MindNode
Mission Control Plus
Movie Explorer Pro
Movist Pro
One Switch
Path Finder
Photo Bulk
Pixel Snap
Screens
TextSoap
TripMode
Ulysses
Unclutter
Yoink
The ones I had licenses/subscriptions for before are: Bartender, CleanMyMac X, Downie, Marked, MindNode, TextSoap, TripMode, Ulysses, Unclutter, and Yoink.
I do have to admit that install more than I regularly use and should uninstall some of these because I’m not using them. In fact, in making this list there were several I removed because I had forgotten about them and didn’t even know what they for. But that’s the beauty of Setapp: try it full-featured for as long as you like with zero entry cost.
Waited too long subscribing as I had many of the apps already. Plunged in when several licenses/versions expired and needed renewal. The subscription sort of covered the expense. Haven’t looked back. I think Setapp curates its collection very well and all apps are high quality.
One never knows. It’s always possible NCSA woke up after a couple of decades, smacked their foreheads, and said “no, no, no, you guys are doing it all wrong. We call a do-over.”
Can anyone tell me how to create a BTT keyboard shortcut that activates the BetterZip “Extract & Trash” action?? I’ve gotten SO frustrated tonight desperately trying to figure it out, and I’m ready to give up.
The huge file preview in Path Finder is really unmatched by anything else. It is fantastic for flipping through drawings page sizes of 36 x 24 inches and 40 x 28 inches
Also, it is my preferred batch renamer because I often realize I want to rename things after I start looking at them. With Path Finder, I just select and press Enter instead having to open a separate app and then get to the same location.
I also use its tree view and advanced file selection commands a lot along with the copy as path feature that supports five or six path conventions like Mac, Unix, Windows, UNC, URL, or just the file name.
Path Finder is hard to give up after you have gotten used to it.
I never liked Path Finder, instead preferring Forklift. Recently TheSweetBits looked at Finder alternatives / file managers and they picked Forklift too:
There are a surprising number of contenders in this category. This article was just published the other day and highlighted a couple of apps I’d never heard of, like DCommander:
For those of you that use Downie, does it always work ?. The reason I ask is that there are a lot of shortcuts for iOS for downloading from Youtube etc, and it seems like they work for a little while and then break. I am considering a purchase of Downie as this is a function that I actually use a lot and the inconsistency of the shortcuts gets frustrating.