Attachments from links in 'All My Files' in Finder on Mac

jzgarrod
I suppose this is more of an Apple question than a Zotero question, but...

Previously, when I downloaded articles to Zotero, none of the attachment files (e.g., images) showed up in the 'All My Files' folder in Finder. After updating to the recent version, however, I find that Finder is incredibly slow as it tries to show me all of these various attachments. Does anyone know what has changed, or how I can go back to not having Finder show me all these files?
  • bwiernik
    edited November 28, 2017
    What has changed in Zotero 5 is that the Zotero data folder (where you database and attachment files are stored) is now stored by default in ~/Zotero, rather than buried in the Application Data folder. This is more in line with expected behavior of apps by macOS (which expects apps to store user-editable files outside of the Application Data folder), and it fixes numerous problems that resulted from the old location (e.g., inability to save PDFs in place with Preview, attachments not being indexed by Spotlight).

    You can remove Zotero's files from the All My Files view by adding ~/Zotero to the Spotlight privacy list (this will also exclude them from Spotlight search):
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191520?start=0&tstart=0
  • jzgarrod
    Amazing. Thanks so much!
  • dstillman
    Just to note, "All My Files" was removed in High Sierra, presumably in part because it often showed lots of useless files. It's replaced with "Recents", which appears to be limited to files you actually opened and so doesn't show all the auxiliary files in webpage snapshots.

    So upgrading to High Sierra is another option here, and one that won't cause you to lose the ability to search Zotero PDFs with Spotlight.
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