Let’s face it.

The venerable OS X file manager, the Finder, is not a perfect tool. Finder is probably one of the aspects of OS X I like the least. It’s good for cruising around file systems in “column mode” and for browsing media files with Coverflow but for serious file management work I tend to want to drop into the Terminal as soon as possible. Problem is that the new Terminal window will not be in the same folder as to where I’ve navigated in Finder, causing me to lose context – every time.

Recently I stumbled on cdto – a little app that adds an icon to Finder that open a Terminal window. With the current working directory set to the folder shown in Finder! No context lost!

And remember, the opposite operation  – opening a Finder window in the current working directory of a Terminal – is trivial with the always useful open command:

$ open .

When applied together, these two small tips makes it possible to use Finder only for the tasks where it shines.