Make Finder Window Columns Resize to Fit Filenames
Thanks to John Gruber of Daring Fireball for alerting me to an option in the Finder that I’d never previously encountered: the ability to have column view adjust the width of columns to fit the longest visible filename. I’ve been using it only for a few days, but I’m already a big fan. (Blogosphere assists in uncovering this feature come from Jeff Johnson, Michael Tsai, and DifferentDan.)
Enabling Auto-Resize in macOS Old and New
Although Apple exposed this option in macOS 26 Tahoe for the first time, it has been available in previous versions of macOS for some time via a defaults write command or Marcel Bresink’s free TinkerTool utility, which provides a graphical interface to numerous hidden preference settings in macOS. (That link points to the current TinkerTool 11.4, which is for Tahoe. If you’re running macOS 13 Ventura, macOS 14 Sonoma, or macOS 15 Sequoia, make sure to get TinkerTool 10 instead.)
Before I dive into this feature in the context of Tahoe, here’s how those running earlier versions of macOS can enable it from the command line in Terminal. To reverse the setting, change the YES to NO. I don’t know how far back it goes.
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXEnableColumnAutoSizing -bool YES; killall Finder
Alternatively, in TinkerTool, select “Automatically adapt to file name widths in column mode.”
In macOS 26.1 Tahoe, Apple added this column view option as a checkbox in the View Options window, accessible in the Finder via View > Show View Options. This window can be a bit confusing because it reflects and (to an extent) operates on the frontmost window open in the Finder, so it changes radically depending on whether the window uses icon, list, column, or gallery view (shown in order below). Plus, some options, such as Show Library Folder, appear only when the window is displaying a particular folder (the Home folder, in this case).
As shown above, when you open View Options for a window in column view, a new checkbox labeled “Resize columns to fit filenames” appears. Select it, and every window in column view automatically resizes its columns to fit (almost) the longest filename. In the screenshot below, you can see the difference between a window where each column is the same default width (top) and the same window after selecting the “Resize columns” checkbox (bottom).
Oddities and Limitations
You may have noticed my waffling “almost” parenthetical above. As you can see in the lower screenshot, I have a file whose extremely long name is still truncated after I selected “Resize columns.” (In fact, there are two files in that folder with truncated names.) Apparently, Apple’s engineers couldn’t bring themselves to expand columns beyond a certain point. That’s not entirely unreasonable—macOS filenames can be up to 256 characters long, and expanding a window to accommodate such a filename would render column view much less usable.
There’s another caveat, as Gruber notes:
Also, it’s an obvious shortcoming that the feature only adjusts columns to the size of the longest currently visible filename. If you scroll down in a column and get to a filename that is too long to fit, nothing happens. It just doesn’t fit.
It’s not quite “currently visible,” since the column will resize appropriately for long-named items that are one or two items outside the current view, but I think I understand why the feature works this way.
You have long been able to drag a column divider manually to expand it enough to read a heavily truncated filename, and if you Control-click a column divider, you can choose from Right Size This Column, Right Size All Columns Individually, and Right Size All Columns Equally. Even better, double-clicking a column divider right-sizes that column, and Option-double-clicking any column divider is the same as choosing Right Size All Columns Individually. That command has no limit on column width, and it too expands columns only enough to display the currently visible items without truncation. This approach makes perfect sense, since the user is invoking the command to adjust what they’re looking at.
However, when “Resize columns” is working globally on all column-view windows, limiting column expansion to the visible items makes less sense. As you click through folders, each new column shows the items that sort to the top of the list first, so the column width adjusts based on those top-sorted items—not what you might scroll down to see. Although it’s not unreasonable for Apple to reuse the Right Size All Columns Individually code, browsing users are as likely to scroll down as not, at which point they may encounter truncated filenames.
I think Apple is trying to thread the needle between a global feature that works automatically and one that users can trigger on demand. When applied globally, it makes some sense to tread carefully around unknown extremes; when invoked manually, it should just do what the user expects. In addition, perhaps most folders contain few enough items that expanding beyond the currently visible names would be an edge case.
Gruber also bemoans the fact that the column-resizing feature both expands and shrinks columns, saying that it “looks a bit higgledy-piggledy that every column is a different width.” I prefer the narrow columns because they let me see more of the hierarchy in a single horizontal view—“higgledy-piggledy” is unavoidable when columns resize in any way.
Quick Summary
If all this has seemed like a lot, here’s what you can do with resizing Finder window columns:
- Drag column dividers to resize columns temporarily.
- Control-click a column divider and choose one of the Right Size commands to temporarily adjust the size of the current column, all columns individually, or all columns equally, based on the longest currently visible filename.
- Double-click a column divider to temporarily right-size that column, or Option-double-click a column divider to resize all columns individually based on the longest currently visible filename.
- If you prefer columns that always resize to show nearly the longest currently visible filename, select the “Resize columns to fit filenames” checkbox in View > Show View Options in Tahoe. In previous versions of macOS, enable that setting with the
defaults writecommand described above or TinkerTool.
Strange. On my Mac (macOS Tahoe 26.2, M4 Mac mini) Control-clicking a column divider in Finder window (Column View) does nothing (no context menu) but just scrolls the column. Option-double-clicking does nothing, either.
Huh! It definitely works in Tahoe and Sequoia here. Are you seeing the special cursor when your pointer is over the column divider? In Tahoe, it’s two arrows pointing in either direction with a vertical line in the middle.
But I have a small correction—you only have to double-click on the column divider, not Option-double-click. Option works as well; it’s just not necessary.
Has this behavior changed in Tahoe? In Sequoia, a double-click resizes just the one column, and option-double-click resizes all columns individually.
Doh! Fooled in the opposite direction (I hadn’t opened enough folders in my subsequent test). Option-double-click it is.
No. The cursor doesn’t change (still the normal arrow cursor) over the column divider in Column View. Tahoe 26.2. Strange.
But I almost never use the Column View in Finder. My Finder windows are always in List View. After I read your article, I just switch to Finder, switch the frontmost window to Column View and experiment, and the cursor doesn’t change over the divider.
Of course, in the List View, when I move the cursor over the Name/Date/Size row near the top, then the cursor changes over the divider (between Name and Date, for example.)
Same as @Mark_Nagata here except:
(I’ve turned scroll bars to always on about a month ago). MacOS 26.2.
Oh, wow! Bottom of the column divider! Thank you David, for the information.
On my Mac, in Finder’s Column View window, the cursor remains the normal arrow cursor except at the very bottom of the column divider, where a tiny icon of a-couple-of-vertical-bars is present. Only when I move the cursor over this tiny icon at the bottom of the column divider, the cursor changes to the “two arrows pointing in either direction with a vertical line in the middle” cursor that Adam indicated, and Control-clicking there pops up the contextual menu as you described.
However, when the horizontal scroll bar is present at the bottom of the Column View, the couple-of-vertical-bar icon is not visible, and the cursor is always the normal arrow, thus it’s not possible to get the contextual menu, it seems to me.
I set the “always show the scrollbar” option in System Settings > Appearance, thus the vertical scrollbar tends to be visible (but not in Finder’s Column View when the number of items is few and there is no way to scroll vertically.)
That’s what I referred to as ‘resizer’. Surely it has a name, and is similar to the double-arrow-line-at-45-degrees thing you get when resizing windows at the corners.
I’m not getting the contextual menu for some reason, but column resizes to widest filename when I double-click the grabber spot bottom of column divider. Anyway, I’m more a list-viewer so it’s not much an issue for me, and am
this feature will turn up for list view as well as I tend to give files, ahem, descriptive filenames. Oh, wait! I just went back to List view and double clicked the column divider at the top of the list and it expanded to longest filename. Whooops! 
MacOS 26.2, TinkerTool 11.4 (build 251215), Bresink Software Updater 2.2 (build 251210)
I have the latest and greatest system and application software, but I still don’t see the TinkerTool checkbox!
As Adam said, that option is no longer hidden in Tahoe, therefore it makes sense that it would be removed from TinkerTool, as its purpose is to give access to options not visible in settings.
My personal Finder bugbear, since FOREVER…
List view never remembers the Name column-width you were using.
If you reopen the Finder, or restart the Mac, it always resizes Finder’s Name column-width to the smallest size in List view.
Every. Damn. Time.
Why can’t we have a setting for List view that says and then does: “Remember filename column size”. Too hard?
Yeah, I think I was conflating list view with column view (which I never use).
No worries. Column view doesn’t remember column width you had last set either. Apple’s just being consistent.
Very valuable information here, and Thank you.
Onyx also has the parameter which can be selected at: Onyx > Menu > Parameters > Finder > Autosize
and yes Marcel included this in TinkerToolSystem.
I had been looking for something like this for decades having 100’s of thousand teaching slides and it is a lifesaver. Yes, truncation occurs and now I know it is at 256 letters or numbers.
Thank you.
Patrick
Excuse me. Dr Bresink.
Respectfully!
Hmmm. Good to know.
I checked TinkerToolSystem and plain TinkerTool and concur it is not there anymore.
I DO like very much the CLI Adam offered:
”defaults write com.apple.finder _FXEnableColumnAutoSizing -bool YES; killall Finder”
It works and so does View Show Options in Finder Preferences.
Thank you. Patrick
Adam, thanks for the article. I have always found manually resizing columns a nuisance, so this was welcome news, tho it took me a bit to decipher what to do on my MacBook Pro.
First I opened a new finder window, and in the top menu bar chose View>Vew Options but this menu had no option to resize columns.
Turned my attention to the columns. I moved the cursor over the resize column icon and a right click there showed a new menu, but the option to resize the column was still missing.
Finally I happened to right click the cursor within a column, a menu appeared including the Show View Options>Resize Columns to fit filenames. It is interesting that this menu item only appears in this this particular menu, and not in two others.
For me, this falls under things I have never thought to right click on.
This is fantastic – Thanks*!*
I have now confirmed. The behavior Adam described depends on a particular OS setting item. In System Settings > Appearance, there is a three-choice setting item for “Display scrollbar when:” (sorry, I don’t know how it is shown in English. Please see the screenshot below.)
When one of the first two, “auto following mouse” or “during scroll”, is selected, the divider line in Finder’s Column View window behaves like Adam explained.
However, when the last choice “always show” is selected, the divider line in Finder’s Column View changes to a thick gray bar that can’t be dragged. Instead, at the very bottom of the thick gray bar, there is a tiny icon of two vertical bars, which you can click-and-drag, and you can Control-click to get the contextual menu. So, you must interpret Adam’s word “column divider” with “the tiny icon at the bottom of column divider”, if you’ve selected “always show scrollbar” in System Settings.
Here’s an English screen-shot:
And thanks for the tip. I have confirmed the same behavior on macOS 15. Column resizing uses the thumb at the bottom of each column’s scroll-bar when scroll-bars are visible. It uses the thin divider (with a cursor change) when scroll-bars are hidden.
I never noticed this before because I have always had my computers configured to show scroll-bars, and this thumb was in the interface going back to the earliest days of Mac OS X.
Same here. Version 25C56
Adam, the Terminal command doesn’t appear to work in MacOS 10.13.6; at least I didn’t see any changes in file names that were truncated. Manually enlargement works but disappears after you close the window.
@Mark_Nagata Thanks for identifying that settings dependency! I do indeed have “When Scrolling” selected for my scrollbars, in part because they’re even uglier in Tahoe than before (and Apple hasn’t really designed for them for years).
This is also how you get to the problem others have called out: the horizontal scrollbar appears over the handles you use to change column size. And wow, those scrollbars are weirdly dark!
Compare that with Sequoia:
I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this “makes perfect sense,” Adam. Not because of personal opinion, lot alone a desire to enter into an argument.
It simply is a question of consistent behavior of one interaction being applied across different contexts.
Take, for example, double-clicking a column divider in a spreadsheet: this will also adjust the width of the column to the widest cell content in that column. And it does so without depending on whether that widest content is in view, or not. This behavior is exactly identical at least in Apple Numbers, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Excel.
Similarly, the same interaction applied to the sidebar in Apple Mail will adjust the width to the widest folder name. Again without taking into account whether or not that folder name is inside the window’s viewport. It doesn’t even matter if the section containing the widest folder name is collapsed, or not. Double-clicking the divider always adjusts to accommodate the widest name.
Most importantly, the same thing happens when you set a Finder window to List view and double-click a divider. It will adjust the column width — Name, Date Modified, Size, etc. — to its widest content. And yet again, it’s irrelevant whether that widest content is in view, or not.
As an extra bonus, I tried the interaction on a 2014 Mac running macOS Mojave. On that OS, the Finder shows the exact same behavior as all the examples above, including in Column view!
Someone at Apple must have decided, then, that the old, more consistent behavior deserved to be modified. And I wish I knew what the rationale for that change was, given how it has made the behavior uniquely inconsistent.
You may be right! Consistency is almost always good, although I think there’s an argument to be made that in the Finder you mostly care about what you’re looking at, and to expand to meet the requirements of filenames that aren’t in view could itself be confusing. “Why is the column expanding far beyond what’s necessary in the view?”
Or perhaps it’s just a bug.