Finder Aliases and Bookmarks in files like property lists combine URL paths and inode numbers to make them more robust than symbolic links. Here are tools to help you work with them.
Finder
One of the grand illusions of the Mac, the Trash only exists in the Finder’s imagination, and is assembled from the contents of several or many directories. Here’s how it works.
Compare log entries when clicking on an item in the Finder, once when it’s selected but not brought into focus, and again when it’s correctly brought into focus. This points to a cause as shown here,
Introduced in macOS 15, pinning files in iCloud Drive gives you the best of both worlds, as you can evict files to save space, and pin those you want to keep downloaded. But be careful when pinning folders, as they behave oddly.
The Finder’s Get Info figures allow for sparse files when giving size ‘on disk’, but don’t take into account shared data in clone files. This can prove misleading, as shown here with VMs.
Snapshots made by Time Machine and tmutil should be purgeable, although sometimes they won’t purge, and aren’t shown reliably as purgeable space. An exploration of bugs and missing documentation.
Two command tools, lsregister and lsappinfo, are often recommended for dealing with LaunchServices problems. This summarises what they can and cannot do.
How macOS makes the association between file types and apps for the Finder and GUI, using UTIs and their associated data including filename extensions. Why clashes occur, and how they’re resolved.
When you double-click a file and expect to see it opened by the app of your choice, but instead it’s opened by the wrong app, or the wrong version of the right app, or maybe macOS refuses to open it at all. How to fix that.
When listing files by name, should 20test.text come before or after 200test.text? Which order is the more ‘natural’? How this quickly becomes complex.
