Hiding finder preview panel... forever

Question

I'm not sure why but quite recently Finder likes to show me the Preview panel on new Finder windows.

I've tried every method I could find:

• Hiding the preview. Close the finder and open a new window. Will show the same preview again.
• Go to /Users/$username$/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist and edit the ShowPreviewPane setting it to NO. This will magically revert to YES after I relaunch the Finder.

I'm out of ideas. What could I do?

Answer 1

Finder->View Menu->Hide Preview.

Answer 2

I tried deleting library/preferences/com.apple.finder.plist but it had no effect. Neither did changing "Hide Preview" in Finder's View menu.

But -- drum roll please -- with the finder window open showing the preview pane, I used the key combo shift-command-P and the pane disappeared from the open window, AND FROM ALL NEW FINDER WINDOWS I OPENED!

Persistence pays!

Answer 3

This worked for me:

1. Open Finder and close preview pane,
2. Press ⌘+J (or select in menu: View->Show view options), select needed options and press "Set as default" button.

Answer 4

I found I had the same issue. Coda, a text editing app, had a lock on the file. Once I went into Coda's preferences and released the file to Text Editor, my changes to the com.apple.finder.plist file reset. It's safe to delete the file. OS X will automatically create a new file shortly after the old file has been deleted.

Answer 5

Open Terminal

cd /Users/$username$/Library/Preferences/

sudo mv com.apple.finder.plist com.apple.finder.plist.GO.AWAY

On the desktop: Finder->Apple->Force Quit->Relaunch Finder

Check the preview pane (pain) is now gone.

Back to terminal:

sudo chmod 444 com.apple.finder.plist