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I often find myself having to toggle between Finder and whatever application I am using. I like to have Finder open at a certain location, and when I Cmd-Tab to the other app, Finder will often not open at all when I cmd-tab back. I have to stop what I am doing abd click on Finder in the dock. Finder will put me back into the home directory, which forces me to navigate back to the location I was just in.

It's been annoying to me since I've started using macOS, and I've probably put days of research to try to figure this one out. I've seen suggestions ranging from buying a modified window manager to deleting files, to "why would this bother you?"

The closest "solution" I found is pressing Opt before releasing Cmd. While this does force Finder to open, this still puts me into the Home directory, forcing me to navigate again.

I've lost countless hours navigating back to my location, and many more trying to figure out a solution to this annoyance. I'm truly stumped.

agarza
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dizzystar
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    Check the menu, top left. It's more likely that Finder is coming correctly to the front, but it doesn't automatically bring all its windows with it. It used to, until maybe Sierra, but since Mojave just doesn't any more. My solution is to keep Finder pretty much in a Space of its own with windows spaced out to leave them all immediately visible. Then use Ctrl/[number] to go back to that Space when you need Finder. See https://superuser.com/a/1187552/347380 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/179403/85275 for some ideas. Personally, I stopped using cmd/tab the day Spaces was released ;) – Tetsujin Nov 13 '21 at 17:51
  • @Tetsujin That's a lot to do. I'm a single-screen, 2 window, 3 tabs kind of person. Very few things going on. The best I can figure is, if I do cmd-n on Finder, it opens a new window. That keeps it from resetting and I can successfully use cmd-tab. – dizzystar Nov 24 '21 at 16:36
  • I still can't figure out what it is that you're doing to have it not come to the front - unless you've closed or minimised all the windows. Cmd/Tab wont unminimise. – Tetsujin Nov 24 '21 at 16:40
  • @Tetsujin Finder stops opening (outright crashes, I guess) and resets me to home. I never ever close or minimize Finder. A lot of people have this problem. This is my second MacBook with the same annoyance. Your comment is the only one that has a solution. – dizzystar Nov 25 '21 at 17:17
  • Your description just doesn't match what Finder does normally, so it's really, really tough to tell what is happening. Finder never closes or minimises. "Resets me to home" just isn't any kind of comprehensible description of what Finder ever does. Window inside Finder can minimise, but having no windows open doesn't mean Finder isn't there. Nominally if Finder ever crashes it will automatically relaunch. You never did tell me what app title is in the menu bar when this happens, which would have been a start to the whole investigation. – Tetsujin Nov 25 '21 at 17:25
  • Claiming "a lot of people have this problem' tells us nothing at all, as we don't yet know what the problem actually is. – Tetsujin Nov 25 '21 at 17:25
  • I might be having the same / a similar issue. Ever since the Monterey update Finder keeps regularly resetting the ”Favourites" list and all of my tabs. The tabs are getting reset to the root directory (not the user home directory but the root from which I can navigate to the connected drives). This seems to happen at random times. Sometimes when booting up the computer, other times while it's running. All of the different finder windows are still open but all of the tabs are reset. – Keiwan Jan 10 '22 at 21:25
  • @Keiwan The only solution I found was, CMD-N to open a new finder window. Not sure why the second one prevents the reset, but it works. – dizzystar Jan 14 '22 at 19:53

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