Finder - Get Summary Info in Applications

So I was troubleshooting a Time Machine problem and needed to check the total size of a group of installed Applications on my machine.

So I open Finder, go to the Applications folder, select the first 28 Applications, right click while holding Control and choose Get Summary Info (same as Control + Command + I)

The Multiple items box pops up, however it just sits there on Calculating Size. Never moves. Doesn't hang or anything, and I get no errors in the console.

So I played around with selecting various groups of Applications and doing the same thing. Sometimes 10 apps, other times 30 apps. Random results. Sometimes it works, and returns the total size, other times it just sits there.

Also, I'm not experiencing this behavior anywhere else on the system...seems to just be happening in the apps folder.

Anyone else experience this?

Restarting the finder didn't seem to help. Also...a Get Info on the parent Applications folder does work, however in this case I needed to find the total space used only for a few apps.

-Kevin

MurphyM said:

Did you mean control or option? I didn't know control had an special function unless you're just using it as a right click.

I've seen the size not update. But I open the inspector by using OPTION command + i and then you can select multiple items and the panel will update. It seems to me that when the size won't update I can click away from a certain item and come back to it and then it will update.

Once you have the inspector panel open you can add additional items to the selection by command clicking them.

Click to expand...

Yeah, both control and option change the values when you are right clicking.

For example, a right click on single or multiple items shows Get Info in the list.

A right click on a single or multiple items, if you hold down option, changes Get Info to Show Inspector

A right click on multiple items, if you hold down control, changes Get Info to Get Summary Info.

Same thing as when you click OPTION command + i.

Weird that it is so flaky for me sometimes.

-Kevin

Nick T. said:

On 10.5.2 I have the same symptomology.

I played with it a little and found that there are certain files in the Applications folder that cause Multiple Item Imfo to get lost calculating file size. Camino.app is one such culprit. Pair it with any other file to activate the bug. There are several others.

I didn't pursue the problem any further.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to check it out. Yeah, I was finding that some apps would cause it to stall.

Not a big deal....just a minor annoyance. Something so simple, yet it's having problems.

-Kevin