finder

I use Tower from time to time to do some git operations that require a little more attention or a better visual overview than what I can get via the CLI and built-in tools. However, I noticed that Tower likes to take over any folder with .git, and make Mac OS X's finder turn it into a 'Tower' package, so double-clicking the folder (which now behaves like a mini app or file) opens Tower.

I don't like that behavior, because I have some [example].git folders that I want to browse in the Finder or in other Mac apps without having to 'Show Package Contents'. Apparently GitX has the same issue, and I'm not the only one annoyed by this behavior.

The fix, for me, was simple:

I've often had trouble copying files with Mac OS X's Finder. From back in the Mac OS X Beta days (when it was based on NeXT's UI), hard drive to hard drive copies, network copies, and backups have often had strange quirks, and one of the strangest I've yet found happened yesterday when I tried copying a ~170GB Aperture library from one external USB drive to another.

I tried copying the library three times, and each time the copy would get to about 24GB, the hard drive (from which the library was being copied) would make a loud CLICK, and then it would unmount and remount, stopping the library file copy. This particular drive has never had troubles in the past, and the fact that it kept doing the CLICK-die thing at 24GB meant that there may have been a file problem or a Finder bug causing the problem.

I verified the drive using Disk Utility (could've gone deeper and used other utilities too), but only found one or two small errors (a file count one file off, or a few improper permissions). After repairing the disk, the drive still clicked off at 24GB.

I recently upgraded Transmit using the in-application Update functionality, but after that, whenever I tried emptying the trash, I received a warning that I couldn't delete the "Transmit Favorite Importer," because it was still in use.

Well, the Transmit Favorite Importer ties into the mdworker process on a Mac, which updates the Spotlight search index. Knowing this, I went into Activity Monitor, found the mdworker process, Quit it, and then emptied Trash. Voila! No more Transmit Favorite Importer!

A simple restart will do the trick as well, but if you are like me and have twenty applications open and don't have time to get back into the groove after a restart, this is a quicker way of getting your trash emptied.