Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Odds and ends, Freeware, Leopard, Developer
Refresh Finder is ready to refresh Leopard's Finder, too

There's not much more to say about this one-- you can probably guess what Refresh Finder does from its name, and while it is small and simple, it's also proof positive that even small and simple things can make life a lot easier. Keeping your Finder windows up to date isn't hard, but it's definitely helpful.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Pedro said 5:01AM on 2-06-2008
My problem is that the Finder in Leopard keeps autorefreshing all the time so i get a lot of icon blinks that piss the hell out of me and slows everything down. The icons blink every other second or so it is so annoying. Anyone knows a solution for this?
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John said 5:45PM on 11-13-2007
It still blows my mind that this isn't built into the finder.
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tim said 5:51PM on 11-13-2007
i actually just UNinstalled this yesterday after having it installed for a few months thinking it would be amazing...but i just NEVER used it.
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Fritz Laurel said 5:51PM on 11-13-2007
Thank GOD somebody did this!
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dan said 5:59PM on 11-13-2007
Finder seems to autorefresh for me ok in Leopard. Under what circumstances does autorefresh fail?
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Mikael said 6:26PM on 11-13-2007
I agree with tim – I never used it in Tiger
I think the finder in leopard refreshes even better than in tiger, so, does anyone know in what situations you might need this app?
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chinhster said 6:46PM on 11-13-2007
I could've used it today... I had a folder open in list view and two subfolders expanded in the list. Dragged a folder from one subfolder to the other. The folder I was moving no longer appeared in its original folder but it also didn't appear in the destination folder. Confused, I hit undo and tried again. Same thing. I finally unexpanded the destination folder and expanded it again and the moved folder showed up. A refresh button would've helped here.
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chinhster said 6:48PM on 11-13-2007
I forgot to mention this is on Leopard. I notice stuff like this all the time while developing code.
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Simon Arch said 6:57PM on 11-13-2007
@dan: "Under what circumstances does autorefresh fail?"
When emptying the trash. Tiger's Finder updated the available space instantly, but Leopard's doesn't. In fact, it can take up to a minute to refresh the available space. Hardly Earth shattering but it is baffling.
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imatt said 7:59PM on 11-13-2007
I've actually noticed Leopard autorefreshing a hell of a lot more and more quickly than Tiger ever did. Count me out for this one.
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Matt said 8:05PM on 11-13-2007
Thank god, I was getting tired of unmounting and remounting network shares to refresh the view.
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shubopshadangalang said 6:56PM on 11-14-2007
It amazes me that something like this is even necessary. Why can't the Finder refresh itself??? It's ridiculous. This has been a problem ever since OS X came out - it was not an issue in OS 9 and before. This is one of many reasons I'm considering switching to Path Finder.
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brian said 9:29PM on 11-13-2007
For those who don't want to load a third-party app for this, this trick works pretty well: just switch to another view and back. You can use the command keys for this. Command-1 = icon view, Command-2 = list view, and Command-3 = column view. (And in 10.5, I think Command-4 = coverflow.) I'm usually in column view, so a quick press of command-1, command-2 refreshes the window. (You can press and hold the command key: press and hold command, press 1, press 2, release command.) Like anything else, once you get used to doing it, it's a snap.
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NAVSTAR said 12:08AM on 11-14-2007
Does the Leopard Finder still have lags in updating?? I would have thought this was fixed by now.
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Charles Miller said 1:31AM on 11-14-2007
The Finder has auto-refreshed since Tiger. It hooks into the same filesystem events that Spotlight uses to tell it when a file needs to be reindexed. You only need to manually refresh Finder windows for network shares, which the Finder can't receive updates for.
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Tice said 2:48AM on 11-14-2007
The other one Desky (for changing the desktop picture by dragndrop) is ready too: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23310/desky
Actually under Leopard refreshing isn't necessary anymore.
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Gus said 4:37AM on 11-14-2007
Just because you aren't seeing it doesn't mean it isn't happening. I've noticed a few times over the last few days that the Finder isn't updating the window contents. I just moved an app from Downloads to Applications and the app was still visible in Downloads. Get Info even worked, but it couldn't be moved to the trash. Leaving the folder and returning to it caused the view to update and the app was gone. Seems to be worse in Leopard than in recent versions of Tiger.
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gazerbeam said 12:51PM on 11-14-2007
this is great, but it still doesn't help the "icon preview" bug that seems to crop up frequently. example: download a few images from a website, then look at them in the finder. some have icon previews, some don't. refreshing the page doesn't do anything. select them all, move them to the trash, and then "undo" the trash move and they'll all now show their icon previews. very annoying.
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Casey said 3:05PM on 11-14-2007
"Hi I'm a PC. Whenever you need to refresh a window just hit F5 or Right Click and select Refresh."
"And I'm a Mac.....I can't do that without a third party app."
I guess it's not as funny as I thought....
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Randall Brown said 5:10PM on 11-14-2007
Mine has auto refreshed fine since tiger.
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