Alternatives to the Finder

Recently we have been getting a little fed up with the Mac Finder, yes it has been improved and tweaked to make it run smoother and faster but it still lacks some basics that many people would expect or perhaps used to be in OS 9 (tabbed windows is an example). So we decided to take a look at a few alternatives.

"Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Mac)" (Apple)

The best known is probably

Pathfinder really has it all, it has been called what the Finder ought to be, and we use it here at macmend, altough this writer finds it a little techie and not as graphic and intuitive as he would like. So what does it include, well the developers site lists these, actually it list some of them and really promotes the first few:

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• Command Line Tools and stuff



• Dual Pane File Browser



• Drop Stack



• Tabs & Bookmarks



• “QuickLook” support



• Use Path Finder as your “Default File viewer”



• Subversion plugin



• Application Launcher



• Size browser



• Selection tools



• File list filters



• Integrated Stuffit Engine



• Create and Convert Disk Images



• Customize menu keyboard shortcuts



• Smart Sorting

well as informationI am not sure how many of these we use but there are times when it is an easier file browser to use than finder, has an easier interface and is easy on the eye.

Among the others worth looking at are:

MuCommander Disk Order Forklift and other similar ones that borrow a lot from FTP browsers like Transmit,

The there are the quirky alternatives like:

FileBrowse

For a quick addon of chrome like tabs and some other usefultools you might want to try Total Finder, we like it

I know I am not saying much about these and thats because whilst interesting you need a more complex and fuller finder alternative and thee really is only one of the those. But test them we would like to hear which you think makes the grade.