I don't like the way Finder shows Devices and Servers. Normally, individual share volumes do not appear AT ALL. You can open Finder preferences and enable or disable "Cloud Storage", "Bonjour Computers" and "Connected servers"
Cloud Storage appears to be where the new FileProvider API will place third-party things like DropBox.
Bonjour Computers lists each HOST it finds with Bonjour AND the Network browser (but NOT individual mounted shares)
Connected servers lists each HOST that you have already mounted at least one volume from AND the Network browser (but NOT individual mounted shares)
What I WANT is for mounted volumes to display in Locations, the same place where internal and external drives are listed. You can MANUALLY add them by dragging them there, but they do not disappear when unmounted. On the one hand, I guess that's not COMPLETELY unwelcome behavior since it makes mounting them later fairly easy. But in my experience they also tend to just disappear randomly so you need to drag them another time.
I would Like it if I could have the Locations area display all internal and external drives, and MOUNTED shares, and show the Network browser for quick access to my servers if i need to mount something down the road, but I do NOT want to have an icon for each HOSE i have something mounted on AT ALL. For whatever reason, choosing one of these is EXTREMELY slow to display it's shares, whereas if you have the volumes in the sidebar from manually dragging, clicking on them displays contents instantly. So having the hosts displayed isnt very convenient as a way to get to already mounted volumes because of the delay. But the only way I can find to keep the Network browser will still list each host whether I want it to or not.
All of this seems to now be governed by SharedFileLists (also known as LSSharedFileList) and are managed at ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist, which contains about a dozen .sfl2 files (which are just bog standard plists with a different extension), fir various types of items (FavoriteItems, FavoriteServers, FavoriteVolumes, iCloudItems, NetworkBrowser, ProjectsItems, RecentApplications, RecentDocuments, RecentHosts, RecentServers) along with a folder called ApplicationRecentDocuments in which are individual .sfl2 files for what appear to be all the apps you have ever run or the most recent within an unknown amount of time, but which are how you can "Open Recent" in different apps.
Unfortunately these files are almost impossible to make any sense of. All the keys are $class, NS.keys, NS.objects, and values like NSArray and NSObject. The vast majority of the objects are identified with UUIDs which of course I have no way of identifying. To the extent that I can find something recognizable, like prevoiusly mounted volumes (all kinds: drives and server shares), the only thing for them at all is one entry listing the display name followed by two entries, one of which contains an extremely long string of numbers but is too long to be a UUID, the other is clearly a UUID. Oddly these 3 entries are not nested in any way that you would think linked them together.
The entries that ARE nested all use variables and IDs but I can see stuff referring to Volume Groups, with it is internal or external, ejectable or not, Date last seen, and so forth.
I am not really interested in changing any of that stuff. All I want is mounted shares to display AS VOLUMES in the sidebar, and the Network browser for times when I need to go ahead and mount something else, and NOT the HOSTS themselves because they're not helpful and take up vertical space.
I have been trying to find anything online explaining all of this but so far nothing HELPFUL telling me whether i can even do this or how.
Thoughts??
-Pete
Cloud Storage appears to be where the new FileProvider API will place third-party things like DropBox.
Bonjour Computers lists each HOST it finds with Bonjour AND the Network browser (but NOT individual mounted shares)
Connected servers lists each HOST that you have already mounted at least one volume from AND the Network browser (but NOT individual mounted shares)
What I WANT is for mounted volumes to display in Locations, the same place where internal and external drives are listed. You can MANUALLY add them by dragging them there, but they do not disappear when unmounted. On the one hand, I guess that's not COMPLETELY unwelcome behavior since it makes mounting them later fairly easy. But in my experience they also tend to just disappear randomly so you need to drag them another time.
I would Like it if I could have the Locations area display all internal and external drives, and MOUNTED shares, and show the Network browser for quick access to my servers if i need to mount something down the road, but I do NOT want to have an icon for each HOSE i have something mounted on AT ALL. For whatever reason, choosing one of these is EXTREMELY slow to display it's shares, whereas if you have the volumes in the sidebar from manually dragging, clicking on them displays contents instantly. So having the hosts displayed isnt very convenient as a way to get to already mounted volumes because of the delay. But the only way I can find to keep the Network browser will still list each host whether I want it to or not.
All of this seems to now be governed by SharedFileLists (also known as LSSharedFileList) and are managed at ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist, which contains about a dozen .sfl2 files (which are just bog standard plists with a different extension), fir various types of items (FavoriteItems, FavoriteServers, FavoriteVolumes, iCloudItems, NetworkBrowser, ProjectsItems, RecentApplications, RecentDocuments, RecentHosts, RecentServers) along with a folder called ApplicationRecentDocuments in which are individual .sfl2 files for what appear to be all the apps you have ever run or the most recent within an unknown amount of time, but which are how you can "Open Recent" in different apps.
Unfortunately these files are almost impossible to make any sense of. All the keys are $class, NS.keys, NS.objects, and values like NSArray and NSObject. The vast majority of the objects are identified with UUIDs which of course I have no way of identifying. To the extent that I can find something recognizable, like prevoiusly mounted volumes (all kinds: drives and server shares), the only thing for them at all is one entry listing the display name followed by two entries, one of which contains an extremely long string of numbers but is too long to be a UUID, the other is clearly a UUID. Oddly these 3 entries are not nested in any way that you would think linked them together.
The entries that ARE nested all use variables and IDs but I can see stuff referring to Volume Groups, with it is internal or external, ejectable or not, Date last seen, and so forth.
I am not really interested in changing any of that stuff. All I want is mounted shares to display AS VOLUMES in the sidebar, and the Network browser for times when I need to go ahead and mount something else, and NOT the HOSTS themselves because they're not helpful and take up vertical space.
I have been trying to find anything online explaining all of this but so far nothing HELPFUL telling me whether i can even do this or how.
Thoughts??
-Pete
