What happens if you get rid of it? And more importantly, if you did delete it, or if it stops working, how can you still use your system, and how can you fix the issue? Well, we're gonna take a look at all that stuff, don't worry, but first a brief history of the Mac Finder. The Finder was released on the first Macintosh in 1984.
It's the default file manager in macOS. In 2001 it was redesigned for Mac OS X, with NeXTstep influence, and it gained new features, and a 64-bit rewrite throughout the years, landing us to the present. So basically, it's your file manager, and if you didn't have it, it would be very hard to do your work, much like the File Explorer in Windows, it's a very important program, that runs mostly in the background, if you didn't have it, people would probably be confused, like where did all my files go? So that's all fine and dandy, but since we're here to have fun, let's delete it anyway, and see what happens.
To locate the Finder, we need to dive into the system, library, core services, and locate finder.app. Now, a simple drag to the trash won't work, so we need to tray a little bit harder, but before we experiment, make sure to have a backup of the finder.app, (ding)that's usually a good idea. So we can use the magical Terminal to force the Finder to delete.
We can run the command, so do rm -rf, and then we can put the path to Finder.app, and always make sure you're entering the proper file to be deleted, because as I was taking notes for this episode, I forgot to put Finder.app in the path, and that would ultimately result in deleting the whole CoreServices folder, which you don't wanna do unless you really want your computer to stop working.
When you run the command, and delete the Finder, you'll notice the icon just disappears from the folder. The Finder, depending on your situation, may still work just fine, but when you relaunch the Finder, you'll notice no desktop icon show up. Clicking the icon in the dock, will typically give you an error message, and if no other apps are running, even the menu bar disappears, but that doesn't mean we can't use the system, you can actually still launch other applications, and if we restore the backup Finder.
app, you'll see we can launch it again, but sometimes stuff might break for a bit, maybe relaunch it twice. Now, in newer versions of macOS, stuff is a little more protected, so in Catalina, it's harder to do this, even with the Terminal. But I'm sure someone has found their own workaround, but my personal workaround is to simply mount the Catalinavolume into another system, and delete the Finder that way.
Now in normal situations, macOS and the Finder are designed to work together, and the Finder's designed to always be open, so unless you're a tinkerer like me, you shouldn't have to worry about the Finder not working, or the system breaking, but we don't live in a perfect world. and macOS isn't perfect.
So what if you have that situation where the Finder just doesn't wanna work properly, or it just doesn't wanna open? Now typically the quickest way to fix a problem like this, is just the good old turn it off, and turn it back on again solution right? That fixes pretty much everything.
But what if you're in the middle of that one critical thing, and you just cannot afford to shut down the computer at the moment, but the Finder is still being all stubborn. Well, thankfully there are some solutions to fix that too. For starters there are some other file browsers out there, Adobe Bridge and Path Finder come to mind, so feel free to tinker with a third-party app, and let me know what you find, and what you think of them.
But also, in most cases, spotlight searches will still work, and you can pinpoint your files that way. Plus a little trickI've had to use before, Open and Save panels will still function in other applications, even when the Finder is not running. But if you wanna have a little more fun, use the Terminal. You can browse your file system, open files, and launch apps through the command-line interface.
So for example, if I wanted to change the directory for a folder to the desktop, I would type in cd space, and then the desktop directory. And if I wanted to list the files in the directory, I simply type ls. I can use the Open command to open files, and I can use the dash argument to open applications. And if you ever need help with a command, type man before the command and a manual entry will give your assistance.
So that's all fine and dandy and everything, but what if the finder is deleted completely by accident, or it never opens up anymore, maybe it's corrupted or something, and maybe you're tired of using the command line, and third-party applications, well the good news is in most cases, a simple macOS reinstall fix the issue. To do this, shut down your iMac and turn it back on.
Immediately after power-up, hold down Command-R for Recovery Mode, choose the re-install option, and macOS will reinstall on your computer, and it won't delete any of your personal data. Now if Recovery Mode doesn't work, hold down Command-Option-R on startup, this will load Internet Recovery.
Make sure you're connected to the internet for this to work, and a copy of macOS will download from the internet, and install onto your Mac. So have fun tinkering with your system, and hopefully, some of the troubleshooting techniques we talked about today, will come in handy in general, whether or not you blew up your system on purpose, or it was an accident.
And a good rule of thumb is, if you're experimenting on a personal system, with personal data on it, always have a backup of your data, so make sure to do that too. Let me know about your other mac or Finder tips and tricks, I'm curious to hear about them, and also if you wanna suggest future experiments, and future topics for this show, I'm more than happy to hear them. Thanks for sticking with me, catch the crazy, and pass it on.
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