Where to look for file metadata in the Finder, and how you can customise it, in spite of its apparent confusion. And how APFS takes care of extended attributes for you.
Finder
Introduced in the Finder in Mac OS X, these hidden and invisible files have been quietly causing havoc with backups, revision control systems, and more.
Finder Comments are accessible, easy to use, and unreliable because they rely primarily on data stored in a hidden file. Regular Comment extended attributes are more reliable.
How can you have two volumes in the same APFS container with identical names? How does macOS handle the conflicts?
If you thought that App Translocation only happens to apps left in their original folders and not moved, and doesn’t happen after first run, this could come as a surprise.
Similarities and differences, how to make each in the Finder and Terminal, how much space they use, and how they work in APFS.
Deleting two large files from a volume triggered the updating of figures for purgeable and available space within 9 seconds. Yet 6 minutes later, the Finder didn’t show those updated figures.
One volume has 60 GB of purgeable space, giving 295 GB available; the other has only 15 GB purgeable, so 250 GB available. How can they be in the same container?
Good space management doesn’t bring new emoji, but it makes a big difference when the Finder doesn’t give completely inaccurate figures for Available space. A practical demonstration of its gross errors.
Can we trust the figures the Finder provides for used and available space on a volume? What does it count as purgeable?
The Eclectic Light Company 