There is only one thing I miss from XP that macOs doesn't have

[MDJCM]

I miss this always-neat thumbnail view of folders that have tons of images:

It was so easy to scan through tons of pics using mouse scroll or keyboard arrows, and XP would always arrange them in neat columns with no vertical scroll.

The thumbnail view on macOS is so loose, it's kind of high maintenance.

Maybe there's a nice 3rd party Finder app that does this part well?

 

[CoastalOR]

There are some multiple picture viewing options built in the macOS that you might find useful:

View Pictures
QuickLook : Use QuickLook to view pics. Just select a pic and press the space bar. Then use the up & down arrows to move through the folder. You can get a grid-style going from QuickLook by clicking on the little grid icon in the upper left of the photo when you’ve opened it via the Spacebar key. You’ll get a grid of all the photos you selected before you went into QuickLook.
Or
Preview: You can select all the files in the folder (Command-A), then right-click and Open with: Preview. That will open all pics in Preview so you can navigate through them and edit them, if you choose.
Or
Slideshow: Grab yourself a folder full of photos that you have on your Mac, and open it up. Then, select all the files in that folder or use Command-A. Once you’ve got them all selected, hit Option-Command-Y on your keyboard to start the Slideshow feature. Once you get the slideshow rolling, click on the little grid icon at the bottom of your image, between the right arrow and the Share icon. All the photos you selected will now show up in a grid, ready for your perusal. You can use the arrow keys to move around in the grid. The grid will rotate to any photos that don’t fit on the one screen when you get to the lower right corner of the photo layout.
Or
Column View: Set your Finder window in column view, then you can step through all the photos/images/documents in a folder and also navigate in and out of nested folders using the cursor keys.

 

[MDJCM]

There are some multiple picture viewing options built in the macOS that you might find useful:

Thanks, I've been using macOs for ~8 years now and tried all the views but none are as simple to manage as the XP one was. Because Finder allows the thumbnails to scatter, and then there's horizontal scroll, the sorting is not as good, and then folders forget their views. So it's all over the place in comparison.


I admit QuickLook is a great feature, but only for looking at one image at a time, and to quickly see it in detail. But in terms of looking through hundreds of images, the XP interface is much faster as it lets you scan through many decent-sized thumbnails in a folder and navigate through folders quicker with a consistent view.


Preview provides you with 1 column as a list, and then if your objective was to delete or move/sort images, then it's very inefficient. I do love Preview's editing features though, not so much the file management.

 

[Toutou]

Yeah, the whole viewing-pictures-in-one-folder thing is a little less intuitive than the Windows way (double click any picture, continue left or right through the whole folder).

 

[CoastalOR]

I admit QuickLook is a great feature, but only for looking at one image at a time, and to quickly see it in detail. But in terms of looking through hundreds of images, the XP interface is much faster as it lets you scan through many decent-sized thumbnails in a folder and navigate through folders quicker with a consistent view.

QuickLook can do more than just one picture at a time.

Select multiple or all pictures in a folder before entering QuickLook.
Click the grid icon in the QuickLook (upper left in the QuickLook window) to display a grid of thumbnails of all selected pictures.

The QuickLook thumbnail window can be resized to make the thumbnails larger or smaller. The QuickLook window of thumbnails can be scrolled vertically (no horizontal scroll).

 

[MDJCM]

QuickLook can do more than just one picture at a time.

Select multiple or all pictures in a folder before entering QuickLook.
Click the grid icon in the QuickLook (upper left in the QuickLook window) to display a grid of thumbnails of all selected pictures.
View attachment 690332

The QuickLook thumbnail window can be resized to make the thumbnails larger or smaller. The QuickLook window of thumbnails can be scrolled vertically (no horizontal scroll).

I didn't know that, I gave it a shot.

It starts off good, but then there's a bit too much mouse work getting in and out of pictures, can't rename, can't select etc.

Cool feature though for simply skimming through a folder of images.

Cmd + A then Space Bar, simple enough, could get addictive

I'll continue looking for the power user version.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Use QuickLook in combination with the Finder's "Inspector" (control-command-I) for renaming, tagging, and adding comments to any file.

 

[MDJCM]

I might have to fire up an old Windows machine to do a screencast demo of how productive the XP folder view is. I think a lot of people now haven't used it.

 

[DeltaMac]

Is this something that is now missing from later versions of Windows?
I seldom use Windows, so I just don't know the answer...
If it is only in XP, then that (technically an obsolete OS), more than anything, would explain why people haven't used it for some years.

 

[MDJCM]

Is this something that is now missing from later versions of Windows?
I seldom use Windows, so I just don't know the answer...
If it is only in XP, then that (technically an obsolete OS), more than anything, would explain why people haven't used it for some years.

I'm not sure actually as I stopped using Windows after XP and went to Mac

 

[AppleSmack]

Not as native a solution as using the OS's own file browser, but you could try Adobe Bridge to browse resizable thumbnails, rename, etc. It's free to download and use.