That’s because in column view the size of column number 2 and later is derived (calculated) from the column width of the first column. And when opening a new window that first column has a default size.
See for yourself: In column view, have nothing selected in the first column, drag the column divider to the right, and select an item in the first column. The contents are shown in the second column that has the same width as the first column. Now drag the divider between column 1 and two to the left and select an other item in column one. Column 2 will have the smaller width of column one.
This is on Mojave, I don’t know since when this behaviour is standard.
And once I resized my first window with it, the StandardViewOptions key (with the ColumnViewOptions/ColumnWidth value) appeared in the Finder preferences.
Using Prefs Editor, I had no problems with it. I could change the value and immediately restart the Finder (by option-clicking its Dock icon and selecting Relaunch from the menu), and when my test column-view window reopened, it was at the new size.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t help you. But it seems that now that I know what you’re actually doing, the problem doesn’t occur for me (Big Sur, macOS 11.6.3, 2018 Mac mini).
Seriously, this is a bug-a-boo of mine… I remember the days of OS 9 and EVERYTHING I set up in the finder STAYED that way. I had bought into the visual metaphor since I first saw a Lisa, 4 months before it was released. I used to set up patterns of file layouts in folders and they ALWAYS came back exactly how they were set up. X is incapable of that.
This isn’t rocket science, they USED to know how to do it…
Sorry if I repeat something, I have not read the whole discussion.
I do finder window preset the old Mac OS X way (from 10.0), which still works on 12.2:
Close all Finder windows. Click Finder in the Dock to open just one new window. Set position, size, column-view and column-width with alt-key. Now close this window.
Now open a new window and it is exactly as set above. If you do something else in the steps above, it will not work.
The width-setting with alt-key has changed in all Mac OS Xes as it was without alt key the first ~14 years of Mac OS X so that the alt-key was used to set a single column these earlier days.
Yeah, great. Now log out or restart your Mac. Then open a Finder window. Oops! Where did all your settings go?
The bug is not settings being ignored. It’s that settings do not persist across Finder restarts.
This happens on a vanilla user account so I know it’s not just some screwed up thing on my primary account. It also happens on other Macs so I know it’s not my Mac. And it has been around since at least Snow Leopard.
MacOS 10.4.11 (Tiger) behaves different: The column width of the next column is always the default value.
And running the applescript Simon provided in the first post I get an error on the line
“set the column width of the frontmost window to 206”
The error is: “The value of ColumnWidth can not be read”. (translated, the US version could differ).
The rest of the script runs fine and gives a new empty window, column view with standard columnwidth.
I agree this is the most annoying thing in Finder, since forever! Why on earth can Apple not enable a setting to set column widths in each view!?
I use the List view and have multiple tabs open in Finder, and I use quite long file names. While the Finder window opens the same tabs again on restarts, why do we have to re-width each and every tab column each and every time. So annoying.
PSA: Path Finder (and another Finder replacement Forklift) are both in Setapp. Though personally, as they both have flaws previously mentioned and others, hence me sticking with Finder.
