Show Full File & Folder Names on the Mac Desktop
Have you ever noticed that some files and folders display truncated names when they’re placed on the Mac OS X Desktop? A file or folder named anything over a certain character limit will be shortened with a series of three periods, something like “Mobile Documents Sync” will display as “Mobile Do…ync” and so on. One of our readers ran into this when setting up file syncing between Macs with iCloud and wrote in suggesting it was a bug, but it’s not.
The reason for the shortened file and folder names is actually due to the current icon grid alignment settings, and in order to show the full file or folder name, all we need to do is adjust the size of the icons grid spacing.
How to Display Full File Names on the Mac OS X Desktop
This works the same in all versions of Mac OS X:
- Close out all Finder windows and be on the Mac desktop
- Click on the “View” menu and choose “Show View Options” or just hit Command+J
- Under “Grid spacing:” click and drag the slider to the right to increase the width of the desktop grid, slide right until the full file name is displayed – changes take effect live
- Close out View Options for the Desktop
Assuming the text size is 12-14, moving the grid spacing to about 3/4 is enough to display most full name of most files and folders, but for some extremely long file names you’d have to move it even further over. Because the changes are taking effect live, you can test the settings and see what works best for your needs, although you’ll quickly notice that the grid spacing also directly impacts how cluttered the icons feel.
There is a limit, and with extremely long file names there isn’t a way to have the full name displayed on the desktop, although you could show them with a wide enough Finder window and the “Name” sorting expanded all the way.
I always wondered. thanks for this
Hmmm I never made the connection! HaHaHa
ya well u can thank me later. but there is another option…
even if u set grid spacing to max… OS X default is to show no more than 20 characters…
with this terminal command, u can set it much higher, 100 if u want but then it just looks weird. i set mine to 50 and it is perfect.
They called steve jobs a perfectionist but he still had a long way to go, but we have no new savior insight, not under tim cook anyway.
we are all forsaken.
defaults write com.apple.finder FXDesktopLayoutGridCharCount 50; killall Finder
Restore: defaults write com.apple.finder FXDesktopLayoutGridCharCount 20; killall Finder
Putting the label position on the right works too, and it looks better on the desktop IMO.
hey where do i find this terminal , sorry i m new to mac and u might fnd this silly, but i really want to learn mac…
Thank you so much for this!
That works for files on the desktop but how about file names in Finder windows? I have a lot of truncated file names that your fix did not work on.
u try this in terminal and increase the grid spacing as well shown in this original post?
“defaults write com.apple.finder FXDesktopLayoutGridCharCount 50; killall Finder”
that works inside finder for me and also on desktop.
I wondered about that too, already took care of it, looks better now. Took longer to close out every thing on my desk top, that to actually do it. Learn something new every day. I had upgraded to lion about a week ago. Its great.
[...] we covered how to show full file names on the Mac OS X desktop, avoiding the abbreviated labels that occur when a file or folders name is too large to fit in the [...]