Mac OS X Lion – Remove “All My Files” from Finder

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Mac OS X Lion – Remove “All My Files” from Finder

November 17, 2011 by decoding

Finder on Mac OS X Lion by default is always showing “All My Files” on every new window. Well to be honest not even once I found it useful, never used it since the first install.

Even if you are a geeky Terminal fan, there are always times that you start up Finder, and you need to get faster to your important files. Most of the times I am looking for something in the Documents folder/subfolders, so here is how I have set it as the default Finder directory:

Go to Finder, main menu -> Finder -> Preferences… -> General -> and select your favorite folder in “New Finder windows show” option as shown in the screenshot below.

You can also remove “All My Files” from the Finder’s sidebar as well, just right-click and remove it, or uncheck it from Preferences -> Sidebar.

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Posted in Apple, Mac OS X, Software | Tagged Finder, Lion | 20 Comments

20 Responses

on December 30, 2011 at 2:06 | Reply Jennifer Silverberg

Thanks!!!!
on February 11, 2012 at 4:05 | Reply AllFilesHater

You sir are a god amongst men! Chive on!
on February 25, 2012 at 3:13 | Reply alex

Excelent!
on February 28, 2012 at 7:21 | Reply Austin

Thanks! This was bothering me, and I didn’t realize it could be configured. One less reason to hate my Mac.
on March 1, 2012 at 1:23 | Reply Kurt Remlinger

I didn’t realize that if I moved ‘AMF’ to another folder, so that anyone on my computer could see every file, that it would pull ‘AMF’ from every folder on my desktop and remove all emails. I since moved them back into the original ‘AMF’ folder, but they won’t ‘magically’ go back into the email program or into their original folders, any ideas??
- on March 22, 2012 at 1:16 | Reply Skylac
  
  Did you find a fix for this as it’s happened to a friend of mine?
on March 19, 2012 at 14:11 | Reply Julian Profas

thanks, very useless default display, changed it to my home folder ^^
on April 14, 2012 at 23:49 | Reply Daphne Schmaphne (@bythesheetstore)

googled my problem, your response was first, easy peasy solution – THANKS!
on May 8, 2012 at 22:48 | Reply Mike Tippets

Thanks very much – this was completely annoying.
on May 24, 2012 at 10:03 | Reply deth

It is still on the “GO” menu…
on June 26, 2012 at 1:56 | Reply Cody

All of Mac Lion’s new features for ease of usability are terrible. All my files = terrible; automatically opening all previously open windows upon restarting OS or program = worst idea in the history of an OS. It sucks that Mac has started treating people like Windows user of yore. It’s all downhill once a company gets too big of a market share. Too bad Apple started treating us like idiots!
on June 26, 2012 at 16:24 | Reply hey-ya

THANK YOU. I cannot think of one reason why All My Files would be useful.
on June 28, 2012 at 5:43 | Reply DropTheNerd

This is great! Thanks for sharing!
on July 20, 2012 at 8:27 | Reply Errg

uff, thanks
on August 4, 2012 at 19:34 | Reply Richard Kettelerij

Great trick, the “all my files” view is slow as hell
on August 9, 2012 at 21:24 | Reply Russell

Thank you kindly!!!
on August 22, 2012 at 17:18 | Reply Scott Crittenden

Thanks so much! That was driving me crazy….
on September 11, 2012 at 23:48 | Reply gnormb

This was helpful, thanks! Various other searches – including of apple support areas were not nearly as helpful or clear.
on November 3, 2012 at 4:29 | Reply Margaret

I also hate All My Files, Launchpad, monochrome icons and other wonderful features designed to make computers fit the iphone modus operandi. I have followed all the instructions to customize Finder and Sidebar preferences, but every time restart or I log out and log back in, there it is again. All the folders I have dragged into the sidebar are gone, all the ones I have gotten rid of are back – it doesn’t keep any of my settings. I have deleted the finder and sidebar plists in ~/Library/Preferences, restarted, customized it, and it’s fine until I restart or log out. If I save the old plist which has no longer existent folders in it and put it back, this will persist with a restart or log out, but any new settings I put in will not stick. I even reinstalled the system via the Lion restore feature, which took hours, and I got the same old sidebar I wanted to get rid of and couldn’t get new preferences to stick. I have done permissions repairs but that doesn’t change it. I have reset PRAM.

Things generally aren’t working as well since the release of Mountain Lion and IOS 6, I presume because everything is being modified to work with the newer systems. I have used 3rd party software like Cocktail at times to try to fix things up; some features are good but some seem to make things worse, at least for someone with my level of knowledge. If All My Files is the wave of the future for Apple, I may be switching to Windows sometime in my future. Was this really Steve Jobs’ intention, for the iphone to distort the Mac OS beyond recognition?

Anyway, if I erase and reinstall the OS, is it likely to fix it, or will the same old stuff be brought into the new OS from my backups? Would I have to completely start from scratch with my preferences, display calibration profiles, etc? Thanks for any suggestions.
on January 19, 2013 at 18:33 | Reply AP

What was Apple thinking when they introduced this feature!