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Jetheat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 13, 2008
247
2
I have OSX Lion and I also have Totalfinder.

For some reason, my sidebar is not showing up in my finder.

Any clues?

JH
 

blipmusic

macrumors 6502
Feb 4, 2011
250
23
I kind of wonder about this behavior as well.

Before, I opened the dmg containing the app, pressed the "blue pill" in the top right corner of the window to reveal the side bar and then dragged the app to the app folder.

In Lion, the blue pill is gone along with the menu choice and keyboard shortcut to show the side bar (at least from a dmg window), meaning that if the app dev didn't include a short cut to the app folder, installing apps just got a bit awkward compared to pre-Lion OS X.

I know I could just place the app folder in the dock and be done with it but I find this gui "simplification" (if that is indeed what Apple intened) odd.

What is the real intention here? To press app devs to include a convenient app folder short cut? That's kind of hit and miss right now. Or tin-foil-hat-scenario of pressing devs towards releasing on the app store, rather than selling independently?

There are quite a few smaller gui changes in Lion I just don't see the motivation for.
 

tjb1

macrumors 68000
Aug 26, 2010
1,999
0
Pennsylvania, USA
I kind of wonder about this behavior as well.

Before, I opened the dmg containing the app, pressed the "blue pill" in the top right corner of the window to reveal the side bar and then dragged the app to the app folder.

In Lion, the blue pill is gone along with the menu choice and keyboard shortcut to show the side bar (at least from a dmg window), meaning that if the app dev didn't include a short cut to the app folder, installing apps just got a bit awkward compared to pre-Lion OS X.

I know I could just place the app folder in the dock and be done with it but I find this gui "simplification" (if that is indeed what Apple intened) odd.

What is the real intention here? To press app devs to include a convenient app folder short cut? That's kind of hit and miss right now. Or tin-foil-hat-scenario of pressing devs towards releasing on the app store, rather than selling independently?

There are quite a few smaller gui changes in Lion I just don't see the motivation for.

Or you can drag it to the launchpad...
 

blipmusic

macrumors 6502
Feb 4, 2011
250
23
Or you can drag it to the launchpad...

That does nothing in my case - bug? Well it does, just not anything meaningful.

Doing what you suggested opens the app from within the dmg, rather than first making a copy to the app folder and then opening that.

While a shortcut is created in Launchpad, it points to the app within the dmg so naturally it doesn't work if the dmg isn't mounted.

(On that note, I don't think Apple have thought through how the dock and launchpad should co-exist since I'm dragging the app to the launchpad icon in the dock to be able to launch it from launchpad, the "other launcher", if I so wish. Or even more ironic: using a launcher, the dock, to launch a launcher, Launchpad.)

There's no "one true way" to install an app as there should be. Some might call that flexible, I call it unintuitive.

Until Apple comes up with something I'd rather have the blue pill back, although that was kind of a workaround as well rather than a solution.
 

iThinkergoiMac

macrumors 68030
Jan 20, 2010
2,664
4
Terra
There's no "one true way" to install an app as there should be. Some might call that flexible, I call it unintuitive.

Well, there's essentially two "true" ways to install an app: drag it to the applications folder or run the installer. That's the way it's designed to work. Launchpad will automatically recognize new apps in the main level of the Applications folder.
 

blipmusic

macrumors 6502
Feb 4, 2011
250
23
Well, there's essentially two "true" ways to install an app: drag it to the applications folder or run the installer. That's the way it's designed to work.

Fair enough, though I still think the "drag to app folder" [EDIT: from a dmg window, in the case that's unclear] could be more transparent considering the whereabouts of that folder isn't obvious to first time users. Opening an app folder window beforehand or starting a series of spring folder actions is clunky [EDIT: especially since Apple went as far as removing the shortcut for showing the sidebar on dmg windows. Why?]. I blame Finder I guess.

Right now, my vote still goes to the return of the blue pill until Apple sort things out (if they ever will).

Simplest way would probably be if dragging an app to Launchpad would also cause the app to copy over to the app folder as well and then start that copy.
 
Last edited:

Sean Dempsey

macrumors 68000
Aug 7, 2006
1,622
8
When you download an app that is in a dmg, like say Dropbox, when you open the dmg and see the folder, you can NOT enable the finder sidebar in the dmg window. So you can drag the app into the applications shortcut that is typically there, but there is no way to then unmount the dmg.

You have to go to a different finder window to unmount the dmg. If you forget, pretty soon you have dozens of dmgs mounted in the sidebar without realizing this.

And no, when you're in the dmg window, you can NOT go to "view > show sidebar." It is greyed out.

We need the pill back.
 

danny_w

macrumors 601
Mar 8, 2005
4,471
301
Cumming, GA
Also is there any way to restore the "old" sidebar layout that was pre-Lion? I find the new layout quite confusing and far less useful.
 

R4z3r

macrumors regular
Jan 19, 2009
105
47
NJ
OK, first I'm sorry for reviving an old old thread. But I am having this issue and none of these solutions fixed it.

I have TotalFinder and Mac OS X 10.8.4

When opening a new window (Cmd+N/Cmd+T) no sidebar appears and the View Sidebar option is greyed out, even when the main finder window is in the foreground.

The odd part is that if you click "Open Folder" in the Downloads or Documents stack, it opens with the sidebar and has the option to use View Sidebar/Hide Sidebar.
 

gank41

macrumors 601
Mar 25, 2008
4,345
5,017
Do View - Show Toolbar

Then after the option Show Sidebar will be available.
Amazing that almost 12 years later, I had this exact same issue and found your post after Googling it. Thanks!!
 
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