Prevent Disk Space size info truncation on the Finder Desktop
When you have extended information displayed under icons with the Finder from the ‘show item info’ Finder preference, you’ll occasionally run into an annoying truncation with used and available disk space. If you’re bothered enough by this to want to change it, here’s a solution that involves tweaking a system file:
* Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/
* Find and locate English.lpoj and open it
* Within this directory, locate the file ‘Localizable.strings’ and back it up in a safe place
* Now launch the ‘Localizable.strings’ file in a text editor
* Search for the following string: “IV9″ = “, ^0 free”; (it may be easiest to search for IV9)
* Remove the ‘free’ text following ^0 but keep everything else identical, the new string would look like this: "IV9" = ", ^0";
* Save the file and exit the text editor
* Kill the Finder and relaunch it, you can do this via the command line by typing killall Finder and it will automatically relaunch on it’s own
* Problem solved! The full size informaiton should now be visible.
This works because it makes the overall text displayed shorter by removing the five ‘ free’ characters (space + free), allowing for the full display of the more useful information (space used and space available). The display problems seems to be less of an issue in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but it’s always annoyed me in earlier versions of OS X.
This is part of a broader tip on MacTricksAndTips about changing virtually any default text within Mac OS X, I think it’s the most useful though by far, but if you feel like changing other default text check out their article on the matter.
[ via MacTricksAndTips ]
Excellent, just what i was looking for
Keep it up.
Alternatively, in the View Options set the label position: right — no truncation then.
On both my MacBook and iMac, both running Snow Leopard, I cannot save the changed the “Localizable.strings” file in TextEdit, even after changing permissions in Get Info to Read/Write. I know this sounds silly but do I need a different text editor or have I missed a step somewhere?
it works, you have to give permissions for read and write for all, Klancelot.
But what happen when for example I have 499’76G…69’32 GB when it must show: 499’76G, 269’32 GB, because the size of the hard drive…
Stan-O option is ok as well
And if you put the icons bigger you can read as well
thanks!
Hi Akaki, I thought I tried that but maybe I’m doing it wrong. I hit Get Info on the strings file and set all permissions at the bottom to read and write. Close out and try to make the change in TextEdit. It still won’t save. Am I doing something wrong or do I need to set permissions another way?
For those having the same trouble I am, using BBEdit instead of TextEdit fixed the problem.
I have tried this and got the file to save ok, but there is no change on the desktop. Stan-O’s method also isn’t working for me, there is still truncation. What the hell am i doing wrong?
@ KLancelot – or save as to desktop then replace the .txt with strings and then drag and drop or use BBEdit.
I couldn’t find the IPV9 line string, instead i only found the IPV7, snow leopard
I am trying to do that in the greek version of MacOSX 10.7.3 (Lion) However I cannot find those strings in the El.lproj. The English “free” word is in the English.lproj but the greek “ελέυθερα” is not in the el.lproj which is supposed to be the greek equivelant. Any ideas?
(BTW no IV9 string near the “free” word in the english.lproj, and no IV9 string ANYWHERE in the el.lproj)