I absolutely love Leopard’s new Spaces feature, however, the Finder’s default behavior in Spaces drove me slightly crazy. For example, if I wanted to quickly add an attachment to an Email and Finder was open in a different space I would have to either close that Finder window or drag the Finder window to the space where the Email window was open. Well, as it turns out there is a very simple solution to this problem.
Open up System Preferenes-Spaces and click the + button to add an application to a default space. Now to add the Finder you will need to navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices, select Finder.app, and then click the Add button.
Once back in the Assignments window, click the Space column next to Finder.app, and set it to ‘Every Space’. Now Finder will appear on all spaces making your multi-spatial life a little bit easier.
Be sure to check out the other Leopard Tips listed below.
Thank you! That was making me nuts yesterday. I clicked “Finder” on the dock, and it switched spaces, and I almost threw my laptop through the wall. Then I went to try to add Finder to every space, and I couldn’t remember where it was, and Spotlight wouldn’t find it for me. Anyway, here’s to being more productive today!
dolphinbuddy | Nov 28, 2007 | Reply
@dolphinbuddy - Glad I could help, I can’t believe Apple didn’t make this the default behavior.
Franklin | Nov 28, 2007 | Reply
Good tip… nice to know that we have that option. I’m looking for something slightly different…
I have a few apps (Finder, MacVim, Terminal) that I want to be “active” in every space, but not duplicated in every space (which is what the above tip seems to do).
If I have a finder window open in one space, and then click the finder dock icon in another space… just launch a new window in the current space. Similarly I want to have different Terminal and text editor (MacVim) windows open in different spaces, without Spaces trying to group them together. Clearly, I can drag windows around after they launch to fix it, but it would be nice if they would show up where I launch them!
Anyone have ideas? — Thanks
Slagheap | Dec 10, 2007 | Reply
@Slagheap - Good question, I’ve had others ask for this ability before. I currently don’t know of a solution. My guess is that this would have to be a feature of the application itself rather than Spaces. So for example MacVim would have to issue a ‘new window’ command instead trying to activate the current window located on a different space.
Franklin | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
I don’t think its an application feature, just changed display/window policy. In DesktopManager on 10.4 it worked that way, you selected the application, you *stayed* on the space and could then issue New Window commands and such (menubar or keyboard). With Spaces you are brought to the Space which contains an open App-Window. Sigh …
The current workaround is to right-click the dock icon (eg Safari) and select the “new window” in the context menu. Eg on Terminal.app this s*** because new terminal is not on the top-level, you need to navigate down a menu level …
Same thing with window minis in the dock. In DesktopManager they would open on the current space. In Spaces they open on the space they got minimized on.
Then with DesktopManager you could see the contents of the spaces in the menubar, w/o bringing up the overlay or clicking the menubar icon. And you could configure spaces to F1…Fn, allowing single-click quick changes. And you could turn off the annoying desktop change animation.
Plenty of annoyances with Spaces … Tip: You can bring back a few things by installing DesktopManager *in addtion* to spaces. This seems to work “ok”.
Helge | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
@Helge - Good to know, I hadn’t tried DesktopManager just VirtueDesktops. Perhaps someone can figure out how to make Spaces behave this way. As for DesktopManager, isn’t that a PPC only application? I’m not sure I’d want to run it along side of Spaces on an Intel Mac if it required Rosetta. Are you using a PPC or Intel Mac with DesktopManager?
Franklin | Dec 12, 2007 | Reply
Thank you so much. You are my new best friend. I figured out that I wanted to give Finder access to all spaces, but as a relative newbie Apple user I couldn’t find it. I was just on the verge of turning off spaces when I thought I’d have one more try to look up solutions. And there you were! Thank you!
Gayle | Mar 2, 2008 | Reply
@Gayle - Glad to help
Franklin | Mar 3, 2008 | Reply
Thanks! I was going nuts over this as well, trying to import videos into Keynote when Keynote is in Space 2. Great tip!
Henrik Ahlén | Apr 30, 2008 | Reply
@Henrik - Glad to help! Did you see the other Leopard Tips ?
Franklin | Apr 30, 2008 | Reply
Thank you for this tip - it’s taken me some months to stagger into it while drifting around the net - it’s something that has bothered me but not enough to search for an answer, now I’ve found a fix I’m rather happy.
Gary S. | May 3, 2008 | Reply