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> Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, this moves the f

> Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing. The reason other OS's don't support that macOS feature is because their open and save dialogue is usable on its own. In my opinion the open and save dialogue is one of the worst designed interfaces on macOS (and easily the worst open and save dialogue across all of the popular desktop environments). The fact that it's "killer feature" is having to use another file navigator to find the target and then drag that file into the first dialogue (ie dialogue that should have been used to find the file to begin with) is more damning than anything. If there were two things I wish Apple would add in macOS, it is: 1. draggable hotspots (like in Windows and KDE) 2. a completely redesigned open and save dialogue that works a little more like Windows and KDE I can live (and even like some of) macOS's idiosyncrasies. But those two irritate the hell out of me on an almost daily basis.

saagarjha 5y ago
What do you not like about the existing dialog?
- drcongo 5y ago
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    I hate Windows! Just because I happen to think specific UI elements are better than macOS it doesn't mean I prefer Windows as a platform. In fact I consider such opinions as being more objective than the "apple can do no wrong" fanboyism that often gets posted.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  Navigating is a pain. eg you cannot navigate to any "hidden" directories and cannot you type paths in the "address bar" nor the file name input selector. There's a few other little annoyances but I can't recall them right now (currently awaiting delivery of a new MacBook Pro so I'm back to running Linux for the time being). The dialogue annoys me enough that I've just gotten into the habit of opening everything from the command line instead. In fact Finder is pretty poor for those things too (I've lost count of the amount of times I've ran `open .` to launch Finder in the path I want rather than navigating there via the GUI). But at least Finder does 90+% of what I want, even if I do have to turn to the command line a lot. Whereas I find the open dialogue to be almost completely useless.
  - jitl 5y ago
    - Cmd-Shift-G opens a fuzzy complete path input - “Show hidden files” is a preference you can change. Once you’re comfortable with the CLI and know the paths you care about for a task, in what cases do you prefer a GUI open dialog on other systems?
    - hnlmorg 5y ago
      > Cmd-Shift-G opens a fuzzy complete path input The problem is that's not going to be an easy thing to remember. It's not an obvious hotkey and nor is it even memorable that the hotkey even exists. There's no UI hints that it does. And when you use hundreds of different pieces of software every day, from CLI tools to complicated desktop applications, there's no way anyone can remember every single hotkey and flag for them. This is why tools like fzf and sophisticated shell auto-completion exist. They've at least recognised that this stuff needs to be discoverable somehow. In fact that is my biggest annoyance with Apple's UIs. There's so much hidden functionality that is almost impossible to discover (and a lot of it is incredibly easy to forget again too). For example I was using an iPhone for years before I discovered you could move the caret by long pressing on the space bar. Before then I was cursing how much easier it was to edit text in Android because I just assumed there wasn't a precise way to move the caret in iOS. I felt like such an idiot that it took an internet meme to teach me to use my phone...but then I remember that it shouldn't have taken a meme to make people aware that feature existed. > "Show hidden files” is a preference you can change. I don't want to change a preference. I want to be able to view hidden files on demand. Most of the time hidden files are better off hidden. That's actually an example of sensible defaults. However it's also useful to be able to toggle them on from the open dialogue when needed. > Once you’re comfortable with the CLI and know the paths you care about for a task, in what cases do you prefer a GUI open dialog on other systems? It's the other way around, I grew up on text only systems and had to learn to adapt to GUIs. I still struggle with them even now (which is why I hate it when you're expected to stumble upon functionality by chance). As for when I prefer to use the GUI open dialogue? It's when I'm already using the GUI for something. Like emails, spreadsheets, word processing. Boring stuff we all wish we didn't have to do but cannot escape completely. I'd rather not have to context switch away from the GUI and back into iTerm just to open a file.
hedgehog 5y ago
I gotta say, for all of my (many, many) criticisms of macOS the save dialog seems fine to me. I almost always have the destination folder already open in Finder, if anything the improvement would be to put a list of Finder's open folders into the save dialog. Dragging it over works ok though.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  A list of open Finder windows in the sidebar would indeed be lovely.
  - sixstringtheory 5y ago
    Not quite that, but macOS' new tabs-in-windows is close. I personally don't love keeping them all in tabs in a single window, but I can always select the Window > Merge All Windows option to gather all my disparate Finder windows together for this purpose. (ETA: This wouldn't work in the save dialog though, I missed that detail)
kergonath 5y ago
> The reason other OS's don't support that macOS feature is because their open and save dialogue is usable on its own. In my opinion the open and save dialogue is one of the worst designed interfaces on macOS (and easily the worst open and save dialogue across all of the popular desktop environments). The fact that it's "killer feature" is having to use another file navigator to find the target and then drag that file into the first dialogue (ie dialogue that should have been used to find the file to begin with) is more damning than anything. It is not a browser, or a file manager. It is a file selector. So it allows you to select files, not do some file management. It is not rocket science. I get bitten at least a couple of times a week on Windows when I stupidly drag and drop the file I want to open, and instead of the sensible behaviour it gets just moved to whatever the app thought the default directory should be for its open file dialogs. > a completely redesigned open and save dialogue that works a little more like Windows and KDE Hell, no! Let me double that: hell fucking no.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  > It is not a browser, or a file manager. It is a file selector. But you're selecting the file in a file manager and then dragging it into your "file selector". That whole dialogue then becomes completely redundant because you might as well just drag that file into the application window without having to click "open". > I get bitten at least a couple of times a week on Windows when I stupidly drag and drop the file I want to open If you drag the file into the text area it will work as you wish. Or you could just drag the file into the application -- a lot of applications will support that and open the file without displaying the file open dialogue.
  - adrusi 5y ago
    Sometimes the application doesn't open files you drag onto its windows, and sometimes you want to select a file but not open it.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > But you're selecting the file in a file manager and then dragging it into your "file selector". That whole dialogue then becomes completely redundant because you might as well just drag that file into the application window without having to click "open". Sometimes. Others the dialog is how you set things like the format of the file or some import options. Or you need a multiple selection and dropping a bunch of files just opens them separately. Sometimes you can input a regex and you just need to quickly go to the right directory. Sometimes you need to select a file to import it into another document and not open it. It is also damn convenient to just drop the folder where you want a new file to be in a “save as” dialog without having to navigate from dog knows where. There are plenty of use cases. What is redundant is a file manager in an import dialog. There is a full blown file manager that’s always going to be better just a click away. > If you drag the file into the text area it will work as you wish. In theory, yes. In practice it’s hit and miss as developers don’t seem to care about using native widgets (that, and the fact that native widgets have vastly different capabilities on Windows thanks to years of cruft they cannot remove). [edit] sorry if it sounded harsh; I have nothing against you. It’s just that the file selection dialogs are a particular pain point on Windows and Linux.
adrusi 5y ago
The macOS open/save dialog is almost identical to the Finder UI, what would you change about it? The reason it's helpful to be able to drag a file from somewhere else into the open/save dialog is that you often already have the file open somewhere. A common workflow: navigate to a document in finder, edit it in some app, save it, upload it to a web form. Similarly if you have a path to the file handy somewhere, you can hit ⌘⇧G and paste it. And while I can see how reasonable people can disagree about the virtues of Mac/Windows/KDE open/save dialogs, Gnome definitely has the worst. Personally my KDE experience is limited, but of the other three I prefer macOS by a wide margin.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  I almost never have Finder open. I usually think "I want to create a spreadsheet" so I'll open Excel and then look for the document. Or I'll be doing some dev work so I'll navigate there in the terminal and then open code via `code .` I think some of that habit might have stemmed from the fact that I don't like Finder much. I don't like the hotkeys (eg [ENTER] to rename), I don't like it's layout. As much as I disliked Microsoft's "lets turn explorer.exe into Internet Explorer", the editable address bar is actually really nice (you can see precisely where you are and quickly change it to where you want to be). I'd say Dolphin (KDE) is probably the perfect file manager for me. It's got a terminal baked in (which automatically changes directories when you navigate in the GUI) so you can mix and match GUI and CLI operations. You can add tabs so your file manager can be used as a session (eg if you're working in multiple directories for a specific task or project, you can have one file manager instance open for that task but different tabs per directory). There's so much I love about it. But it's also the polar opposite of Finder, which might explain why I don't like Finder much. I do completely agree with you about Gnome though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
vvillena 5y ago
This is an interesting chicken-and-egg problem. It could be said that other OSs had to add lots of file management features to their file selector dialog because relying on drag-and-drop from another application was unfeasible.

saagarjha 5y ago

What do you not like about the existing dialog?

drcongo 5y ago
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  I hate Windows! Just because I happen to think specific UI elements are better than macOS it doesn't mean I prefer Windows as a platform. In fact I consider such opinions as being more objective than the "apple can do no wrong" fanboyism that often gets posted.
hnlmorg 5y ago
Navigating is a pain. eg you cannot navigate to any "hidden" directories and cannot you type paths in the "address bar" nor the file name input selector. There's a few other little annoyances but I can't recall them right now (currently awaiting delivery of a new MacBook Pro so I'm back to running Linux for the time being). The dialogue annoys me enough that I've just gotten into the habit of opening everything from the command line instead. In fact Finder is pretty poor for those things too (I've lost count of the amount of times I've ran `open .` to launch Finder in the path I want rather than navigating there via the GUI). But at least Finder does 90+% of what I want, even if I do have to turn to the command line a lot. Whereas I find the open dialogue to be almost completely useless.
- jitl 5y ago
  - Cmd-Shift-G opens a fuzzy complete path input - “Show hidden files” is a preference you can change. Once you’re comfortable with the CLI and know the paths you care about for a task, in what cases do you prefer a GUI open dialog on other systems?
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    > Cmd-Shift-G opens a fuzzy complete path input The problem is that's not going to be an easy thing to remember. It's not an obvious hotkey and nor is it even memorable that the hotkey even exists. There's no UI hints that it does. And when you use hundreds of different pieces of software every day, from CLI tools to complicated desktop applications, there's no way anyone can remember every single hotkey and flag for them. This is why tools like fzf and sophisticated shell auto-completion exist. They've at least recognised that this stuff needs to be discoverable somehow. In fact that is my biggest annoyance with Apple's UIs. There's so much hidden functionality that is almost impossible to discover (and a lot of it is incredibly easy to forget again too). For example I was using an iPhone for years before I discovered you could move the caret by long pressing on the space bar. Before then I was cursing how much easier it was to edit text in Android because I just assumed there wasn't a precise way to move the caret in iOS. I felt like such an idiot that it took an internet meme to teach me to use my phone...but then I remember that it shouldn't have taken a meme to make people aware that feature existed. > "Show hidden files” is a preference you can change. I don't want to change a preference. I want to be able to view hidden files on demand. Most of the time hidden files are better off hidden. That's actually an example of sensible defaults. However it's also useful to be able to toggle them on from the open dialogue when needed. > Once you’re comfortable with the CLI and know the paths you care about for a task, in what cases do you prefer a GUI open dialog on other systems? It's the other way around, I grew up on text only systems and had to learn to adapt to GUIs. I still struggle with them even now (which is why I hate it when you're expected to stumble upon functionality by chance). As for when I prefer to use the GUI open dialogue? It's when I'm already using the GUI for something. Like emails, spreadsheets, word processing. Boring stuff we all wish we didn't have to do but cannot escape completely. I'd rather not have to context switch away from the GUI and back into iTerm just to open a file.

hedgehog 5y ago

I gotta say, for all of my (many, many) criticisms of macOS the save dialog seems fine to me. I almost always have the destination folder already open in Finder, if anything the improvement would be to put a list of Finder's open folders into the save dialog. Dragging it over works ok though.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
A list of open Finder windows in the sidebar would indeed be lovely.
- sixstringtheory 5y ago
  Not quite that, but macOS' new tabs-in-windows is close. I personally don't love keeping them all in tabs in a single window, but I can always select the Window > Merge All Windows option to gather all my disparate Finder windows together for this purpose. (ETA: This wouldn't work in the save dialog though, I missed that detail)

kergonath 5y ago

> The reason other OS's don't support that macOS feature is because their open and save dialogue is usable on its own. In my opinion the open and save dialogue is one of the worst designed interfaces on macOS (and easily the worst open and save dialogue across all of the popular desktop environments). The fact that it's "killer feature" is having to use another file navigator to find the target and then drag that file into the first dialogue (ie dialogue that should have been used to find the file to begin with) is more damning than anything. It is not a browser, or a file manager. It is a file selector. So it allows you to select files, not do some file management. It is not rocket science. I get bitten at least a couple of times a week on Windows when I stupidly drag and drop the file I want to open, and instead of the sensible behaviour it gets just moved to whatever the app thought the default directory should be for its open file dialogs. > a completely redesigned open and save dialogue that works a little more like Windows and KDE Hell, no! Let me double that: hell fucking no.

hnlmorg 5y ago
> It is not a browser, or a file manager. It is a file selector. But you're selecting the file in a file manager and then dragging it into your "file selector". That whole dialogue then becomes completely redundant because you might as well just drag that file into the application window without having to click "open". > I get bitten at least a couple of times a week on Windows when I stupidly drag and drop the file I want to open If you drag the file into the text area it will work as you wish. Or you could just drag the file into the application -- a lot of applications will support that and open the file without displaying the file open dialogue.
- adrusi 5y ago
  Sometimes the application doesn't open files you drag onto its windows, and sometimes you want to select a file but not open it.
- kergonath 5y ago
  > But you're selecting the file in a file manager and then dragging it into your "file selector". That whole dialogue then becomes completely redundant because you might as well just drag that file into the application window without having to click "open". Sometimes. Others the dialog is how you set things like the format of the file or some import options. Or you need a multiple selection and dropping a bunch of files just opens them separately. Sometimes you can input a regex and you just need to quickly go to the right directory. Sometimes you need to select a file to import it into another document and not open it. It is also damn convenient to just drop the folder where you want a new file to be in a “save as” dialog without having to navigate from dog knows where. There are plenty of use cases. What is redundant is a file manager in an import dialog. There is a full blown file manager that’s always going to be better just a click away. > If you drag the file into the text area it will work as you wish. In theory, yes. In practice it’s hit and miss as developers don’t seem to care about using native widgets (that, and the fact that native widgets have vastly different capabilities on Windows thanks to years of cruft they cannot remove). [edit] sorry if it sounded harsh; I have nothing against you. It’s just that the file selection dialogs are a particular pain point on Windows and Linux.

adrusi 5y ago

The macOS open/save dialog is almost identical to the Finder UI, what would you change about it? The reason it's helpful to be able to drag a file from somewhere else into the open/save dialog is that you often already have the file open somewhere. A common workflow: navigate to a document in finder, edit it in some app, save it, upload it to a web form. Similarly if you have a path to the file handy somewhere, you can hit ⌘⇧G and paste it. And while I can see how reasonable people can disagree about the virtues of Mac/Windows/KDE open/save dialogs, Gnome definitely has the worst. Personally my KDE experience is limited, but of the other three I prefer macOS by a wide margin.

hnlmorg 5y ago
I almost never have Finder open. I usually think "I want to create a spreadsheet" so I'll open Excel and then look for the document. Or I'll be doing some dev work so I'll navigate there in the terminal and then open code via `code .` I think some of that habit might have stemmed from the fact that I don't like Finder much. I don't like the hotkeys (eg [ENTER] to rename), I don't like it's layout. As much as I disliked Microsoft's "lets turn explorer.exe into Internet Explorer", the editable address bar is actually really nice (you can see precisely where you are and quickly change it to where you want to be). I'd say Dolphin (KDE) is probably the perfect file manager for me. It's got a terminal baked in (which automatically changes directories when you navigate in the GUI) so you can mix and match GUI and CLI operations. You can add tabs so your file manager can be used as a session (eg if you're working in multiple directories for a specific task or project, you can have one file manager instance open for that task but different tabs per directory). There's so much I love about it. But it's also the polar opposite of Finder, which might explain why I don't like Finder much. I do completely agree with you about Gnome though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

vvillena 5y ago

This is an interesting chicken-and-egg problem. It could be said that other OSs had to add lots of file management features to their file selector dialog because relying on drag-and-drop from another application was unfeasible.