(opens new window)The Apple products and community never cease to amaze me. When there is a problem to solve more than likely someone has already created an elegant solution. An experience I had today reinforced my findings ten fold.

I have a few shares on a network drive that I connect from OS X via Samba. Files get populated into those folders by other applications and when they are ready I goto the directory and pick them up. Well Finder has a mysterious refresh rate for directories… I have never been able to figure it out and there is to my knowledge no hotkey to manually refresh.

So I goto good ol’ Google to find a solution (opens new window)… Looks like nothing built in, but there is this nifty utility called Refresh Finder (opens new window). Built on AppleScript it is lightweight and does what it needs and gets out of the way.

I hate to say it but it far surpasses any elegant solutions I have seen for Windows. Usually those include some constantly running application in the background, starting at startup, always looking for an update, and probably costing $19.99 nagware.

Downloaded and installed in 2 minutes. This will save a lot of time, usually I end up having to just randomly click on folders to hit something that is not cached so Finder can do a refresh. Now there is a refresh button similar to on Safari in the Finder toolbar and life is quite a bit less stressful.

A definite download for any Mac user. If I were to rate it a 10 out of 10 would be in order. Great work S�derhavet (opens new window).

Download Refresh Finder (opens new window)