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Finder file and folder renaming interruption

Submitted by John Frum on May 24, 2009 to Annoyance

My Finder stops renaming files and folders as they are being renamed, resulting in unnamed or partially named files and folders. This occurs whether edit mode was entered by clicking the file/folder name, or by hitting "enter".

The only dependable workaround I've found is to use Get Info to change individual file and folder names. That's too clunky.

Medium

Low

Not fixed

Discussion (8 comments)

ebaur wrote on May 24, 2009, 8:27pm

Are you on a laptop? If so, this may just be your hand brushing the track pad and Mac OS thinking you clicked away from what you were typing.

John Frum wrote on May 25, 2009, 4:34am

I'm using an Intel iMac. The Finder definitely changes modes from "edit" to "display" during the process of accepting rapidly entered keystrokes. It happens in every view mode. Thanks.

kiodane wrote on May 26, 2009, 2:45pm

Often, if there is disk activity going on (such as copying items to the same folder you're renaming something else), Finder may drop out of the renaming mode. If you're copying or moving items at the same time you're trying to rename things, just wait and do one thing at a time.

What other programs are running when this behavior is noticed?

John Frum wrote on May 26, 2009, 3:10pm

That must be it. It has been almost intolerably bad lately, during which time I've been busy writing audio and video files to disk. The Finder apparently updates them more frequently than I thought (every few seconds). Thanks for the heads up.

John Frum wrote on May 26, 2009, 3:12pm

Changed title from [Finder file and folder renaming bug] to [Finder file and folder renaming interruption].
Removed from categories: "Bug"

connerat wrote on June 13, 2009, 3:24pm

I can replicate this problem on a MacBook Pro 2.8 GHZ Intel Core Duo running the latest software updates. Mac OS X 10.5.7 (9J61). It happened in prior versions too, going back several iterations. It never happened on my MacBook Pro, 15-inch, 2.33GHz, but it's obviously a software bug. Still, I can't figure out what's different about my current configuration. This bug drives me crazy.

John Frum wrote on June 13, 2009, 4:00pm

Yeah, I thought we'd pegged the culprit, disk activity (which shouldn't be a culprit, actually), but lately I've noticed it happening in the absence of disk activity.

arcterex wrote on July 5, 2009, 4:56pm

I know at least one culprit for this, is video preview generation. While renaming a mounted folder with video files, renaming is interrupted as other files in the folder have their thumbnails generated.

In folders with only a few files, no interruption happens, until you rename one file and move on to the second, then (presumably) the first file has it's preview updated (or something) and that interrupts your renaming of the second.

Mark Lee wrote on November 7, 2009, 4:10am

It happens when Finder makes icon previews for all the files in that folder or if any other program writes data into that folder. In Snow Leopard (or maybe even in Leopard -- don't remember) there is an option that turns off icon preview (Cmd+J). But that's not a fix, just a temporary solution.

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