Meanwhile, “list view” still has a white background: That’s fixable, though, and with a different graphic the results are quite festive: To continue the experiment, I’ll go back to the View Options window and choose a graphic.īut what’s not clear is that the background won’t tile, so if you pick something too small, well, the results are kinda dorky: I’ll choose the light violet, which makes the Finder window quite attractive: I like the color wheel but, as you can see along the top, there are other color picker options. Lots to tweak and fiddle, but it’s the lowest section we’ll need to pay attention to, “Background”.Ĭlick on “Color” to change the background color and you’ll get the color wheel: To do that, use the Cmd-J shortcut or choose “Show View Options” from the “View” menu. Let’s change the background color in icon view first. Then the horizontal lines is a “list view”, the four vertical boxes is a “column view” and the last is the “cover flow” view that proved rather a bit controversial when it was first introduced. The first, four tiny squares, is selected. There are four different views that have shortcuts. So let’s have a look at Mavericks and how things work, shall we?įirst off, here’s a standard Finder window with its default white background:
Even if you do change the background, however, the other views are automatically black text on white, which is a bit weird, but apparently that’s not supposed to be part of the things we can tweak, as you’ve learned. However, it’s still the case that there are four different views for a Finder window and only one of them can have a changed background color or photo specified.
The good news is that when I tested things in the very latest version of Mac OS X 10.9 “Mavericks”, it does seem to be sticky, even across restarts. Changing the background color of a Finder window on the Mac is one of those rarely used features that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.