Ironically, I can't get my preference to stick in my Preferences folder - the one in my Home folder Library. In Icon View, I set it to By Kind in Show View Options, and for good measure, I right click and select Arrange By Kind. But, when I come back to it (after closing it or moving on) it's out of order again. I thought that customized settings override Set as Default, and that the enclosing folder could be set up differently. Am I missing something?

OS 10.5.8

Go to Users/you/Library/Preferences and move com.apple.Finder.plist to the desktop. Log out and log in, or restart (or relaunch Finder by holding the mouse down on the dock's Finder icon while pressing Option and selecting Relaunch).

If this solves the problem, reset your Finder preferences and trash the plist. If not, put it back and log out/in as above.

Customized settings do override the default but the sort settings are stored in invisible .DS_Store files in each folder where custom settings have been set. Those .DS_Store files can sometimes become corrupted and not accept changed settings. The solution is to delete the .DS_Store file in the folder, then change the settings which will create a new, uncorrupted, .DS_Store.

You can find and delete invisible files by any one of several methods. Probably the easiest is to use Cocktail, OnyX, or TinkerTool System to delete them, but there are lots of other alternatives.

I agree with you joe... it's likely a bad .DS_Store file. Only, in this case, i suspect it's the one in Preferences' parent: i.e., /Users/gregg/Library/.DS_Store

Many of the view options we tweak in a window actually get stored in the folder's parent folder's .DS_Store. There is a cool little utility called fseventer which can show that action as it happens in real time. [i just checked again] Coincidentally, i also have my Prefs folder's icon view set to Kind... and it does stick (list view is set for date modified). As i play around with any of those settings, fseventer shows the ~/Library/.DS_Store getting written to.

EDIT: but perhaps taking out *both* .DS_Stores is a good cure, to be sure.

Thanks for the ideas. Normally, I would think of the plist first, if answering someone else's question. Since it's my problem, my brain blocked that thought. But, it sounds like the .DS_Store file is the more likely culprit. It's not really a big problem.

Update: I have OS X 10.5.8 Leopard. Tried downloading Onyx 2.0.6 / 2.0.5 / 2.0.3 from various sites (Titanium, Version Tracker, MacUpdate, Softpedia, Sofotex) and got the same error: Not recognized. It only registered roughly 50kb before crashing.

Now, if FTM had private messaging, I could give someone who has a Leopard compatible dmg file my e-mail address...

You can instantly exterminate both of those .DS_Store files with this Terminal command:

rm -f ~/Library{,/Preferences}/.DS_Store

[i suspect however that Finder has some of that view info cached... especially if you have opened those windows since login. Therefore i recommend you relaunch Finder immediately after running that command. i could put a Terminal command for that as well... but it's easy enough to do via the menubar or the Dock.]

Thanks! That Terminal command seems to have done the trick. Through two Restarts now, the Arrange By Kind has stuck. That was my first ever Terminal entry!

I'm still puzzled about why none of the Onyx links worked though.

Gregg, I don't know what to tell you about why your links did not download, you may have simply hit a window where the Titanium server was down. However to check I just went to this Titanium software page and successfully downloaded:

• OnyX 1.3.1 for Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)
• OnyX 1.5.3 for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
• OnyX 1.8.6 for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
• OnyX 2.0.6 for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
• OnyX 2.1.3 for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

Yeah, that site was one of those I tried a few days ago. Over the weekend, I went there through your link, and it downloaded fine.

P.S. I forgot to mention that the dmg opened a folder with the pkg icon and an Uninstall icon (among other things that I don't care about). I clicked the pkg and installed Onyx, but I do not see the Unistall icon anywhere on my hard drive. It installed Onyx as an application only, no enclosing folder. What's up with that?

Doesn't anyone here use OnyX?

Just wondering why the Uninstall tool was not installed on the hard drive. Do I have to keep the .dmg around to access Uninstall?

Launch OnyX and go to the OnyX menu. The option to uninstall is there (in OnyX 2.1.3, anyway).

No doubt the Uninstaller still resides on the .dmg; the fact that it was provided independent of the .pkg implies that it wouldn't be part of an install.

This illustrates why it can be good practice not to routinely discard .dmgs once the application has been installed. (On the downside, of course, a collection of .dmgs can eat up a lot of disk space; my "installers" folder consists of 33 items taking up 3.3 GB.)

Just for general information, the OnyX 2.1.3.dmg does not have an uninstaller. If memory serves, some versions previous to OnyX 2.x.x did have it but not all. I recall that the earlier days of OnyX did not have an installer but the app could be installed by simply dragging it into /Applications.

Like you, I keep .dmg files around in case I need them again and that has come in handy. I try to eliminate old ones from time to time in order to clear out some space.

Not in 2.0.6 for Leopard.

Yes, it's still there, and no, I haven't discarded it. I have plenty of space.