Flash Drive does not show in Finder Sidebar

[stefanmaine]

iMac with OS 10.12.6. Two different USB flash drives in different USB ports do not display in Finder windows' Sidebar.

USB port works fine (the keyboard typing this question is plugged into a USB port). The flash drives appear on the Desktop, and in Save dialog boxes. Right clicking on them displays the normal options (Eject, Encrypt, Copy, Quick Look). So, the iMac is seeing the flash drives, and they do work properly.

And at Finder>Preferences>General and at Finder>Preferences>Sidebar>Devices, "External disks" is checked.
At Applications>Utilities>System Information>Hardware, USB appears in the list.
I ran Disk Utility>External>USB>First Aid.

Have I missed something ... like an ON/OFF switch somewhere?

Thank you.

 

[stefanmaine]

Yup, I missed an "ON/OFF" switch!

As all of you undoubtedly know ad nauseam (but maybe there are a couple of newbies who don't), on the Finder sidebar. there is, at Devices, a small-print toggle that appears only when you scroll over it, at which time it reads "Hide" or "Show". Click on "Show" and ... it shows.

I must have inadvertently clicked on "Hide".

My apologies for, once again, answering my own question.

 

[IWT]

Answering your own question is the surest way of knowing that it is wholly accurate

As you said, whether it shows in the Finder Sidebar or not is dependent on your ticking the appropriate box under Finder, Preferences.

Ian

 

[krs]

As you said, whether it shows in the Finder Sidebar or not is dependent on your ticking the appropriate box under Finder, Preferences.

Ian

I don't think stefanmaine was referring to an option in Finder preferences.

If you look at the side bar when you open any folder - at the very top there is an entry "Devices" and when you move the mouse to the right of that, the word "Hide" and "Show" are revealed.

But the default settings Apple has chosen are often idiotic, like not showing the various drives and servers as the default.
Easy enough to turn them off if one at least knows they get displayed, not so obvious that they can be set up to show on the desktop if they aren't there in the first place especially since they were on older versions of the OS.

 

[pm-r]

As all of you undoubtedly know ad nauseam (but maybe there are a couple of newbies who don't), on the Finder sidebar. there is, at Devices, a small-print toggle that appears only when you scroll over it, at which time it reads "Hide" or "Show". Click on "Show" and ... it shows.

And another example of Apple's stupid OS GUI and how they broke their own Interface Guideline rules.

Maybe they should try and get back to some basics and follow the rules. As for example:





- Patrick
======

 

[chscag]

@Patrick:

We've been over this many times. I've personally answered this before about the small plus or minus sign that's hidden unless you scroll your cursor over it.

Let's stop blaming Apple for the less obvious things we may have overlooked. I could give you numerous examples of the same thing in Windows and Linux.

 

[pm-r]

Let's stop blaming Apple for the less obvious things we may have overlooked

Sorry Charlie, but your reply sounds more like an Apple Fanboy's defense response, and there are many Developers wishing Apple would get back to following their own GUI interface guidelines with their OS X and Apple has certainly had enough times to do some fixes including this one.

The user should not be made to feel inferior, nor should they have to ask or mouse and poke around to discover a feature that should be obvious in the first place.

At least that's the way I and many others see it, regardless of whether they are less obvious or not.



- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

Patrick, I find your argument hilarious. Apple's GUI has NEVER been accused of being "obvious." In fact, the Apple interface was horribly cryptic from the very first graphic Mac. I remember going to a store to see what all the excitement was about, with this new graphic interface. There sat a Mac, grey screen, one Apple Icon in the upper left corner, one one-button mouse and zero help. Clicking on the  revealed a minimalist, cryptic and useless menu. No obvious way to start a program, no obvious way way to see the drive contents, no obvious path forward, no obvious help anywhere. Walked out of the store, never looked at anything Apple again for 30+ years. That sign should have been hung in the office of the developers of that first OS. When Windows came out, there were icons for things, and you could actually USE the interface. It wasn't perfect, but you didn't have to break the secret to use it. I didn't get back to Apple until about 2008, when Apple had learned that less is not always more.

 

[krs]

Jake, I'm rather surprised by your comments.
Which macOS are you referring to?
I started with System 6for a very short time, then moved to System 7 and went through that whole exercise where Apple was ready to bite the dust.
Also used Windows during that same period, and for me, the way the Mac worked was much more intuitive compared to Windows.

Even simple things like the task bar - on the Mac the various functions were always in the same place no matter which application one was running, for Windows functions were all over the place, they didn't just vary from application to application, but would change between application updates.

 

[MacInWin]

@krs, I have no way of knowing, I couldn't get the system to display anything. It was the very first Mac, 1983 as I recall, and the press was all a-twitter about this new thing. Ads on TV showed it doing all sorts of things. Huge ad based on the book 1984, Steve Jobs waxing poetic about this new thing. I went to a store, gave it a try for about 10 minutes, got NOTHING from the system at all, despite clicking everywhere I could think of on the screen. Absolutely useless. At least on Windows when you clicked on an icon, something happened. Windows was ugly until version 3.1, but at least it worked.

EDIT: I went looking. It was most likely System 1. Here is a wikipedia link to it: System 1 - Wikipedia
The article says

The menu bar was a new and revolutionary part of the OS. Similar to the one found on Lisa OS, the Macintosh menu bar had five basic headers when on the desktop: the Apple menu, File, Edit, View, and Special. When in an application, the menus would change to better fit the application's uses

On the unit I tried, none of those menus changed at all. No files, nothing to edit, nothing to view and certainly nothing special. I kept trying for about 10 minutes, as I said, gave up and walked out. Next time I looked at an Apple product was in 2008, when I saw an iMac running Windows. That one got me interested and I eventually moved all in to Apple.

 

[krs]

1983? or thereabouts...

That would be the very first release.

System 7 came out in 1991 - we are talking about quite different systems.
The most annoying issue I had with Mac OSs prior to macOS X was that the operating system would crash occasionally.
Windows fif that as well.
But once Apple got over the problematic OS 10.1 (Cheetah) I can't remember the macOS ever crashing.

 

[MacInWin]

Oh, it still crashes, just not nearly so often. More likely what happens is an app crashes. The OS itself is pretty solid.

Yep, very first release. I'm sure it worked, as there were not a lot of howls about it not working, but it certainly didn't fit the description of "obvious" usage.

 

[krs]

Yes, some of the apps crash regularly, and it always seem to be the same ones.
But I can't remember the macOS after OSX ever crashing - before mac OSX the OS would crash pretty regularly - pretty annoying if one has to boot up again.

 

[usagora]

And another example of Apple's stupid OS GUI and how they broke their own Interface Guideline rules.

Maybe they should try and get back to some basics and follow the rules. As for example:

View attachment 30265



- Patrick
======

But we didn't have to explain it . . . OP figured it out on his own ;D

 

[MacInWin]

Yes, some of the apps crash regularly, and it always seem to be the same ones.
But I can't remember the macOS after OSX ever crashing - before mac OSX the OS would crash pretty regularly - pretty annoying if one has to boot up again.

The crashes I have seen recently are more related to not waking up after it goes to sleep. Apple issued a fix for it recently. I had seen it once or twice, had to hard reboot to get it back. Is that a crash? I don't know, but it's got the same effect.

 

[pm-r]

But we didn't have to explain it . . . OP figured it out on his own ;D

Sort of... and to their credit for discovering ...

I must have INADVERTENTLY clicked on "Hide".

It should have been more obvious and not disappear like a Cheshire cat unless being prodded accidentally or randomly by the mouse to wake it up and make it visible.


- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

It should have been more obvious and not disappear like a Cheshire cat unless being prodded accidentally or randomly by the mouse to wake it up and make it visible.

That's your opinion, and you are entitled to it. I, on the other hand, don't want the sidebar cluttered with toggles that I use ONCE and then never change again, which is how it works. As the OP said, he changed it and either didn't realize or forgot he had done so. So the toggle showed up as he rolled the mouse over it, then disappeared again when not needed. Sweet!

 

[chscag]

It should have been more obvious and not disappear like a Cheshire cat unless being prodded accidentally or randomly by the mouse to wake it up and make it visible.

They make some great wine in Canada Patrick. You should indulge a bit more; that might remove some of that "Apple grumpiness" that you seem to be plagued with.

 

[pm-r]

The crashes I have seen recently are more related to not waking up after it goes to sleep. Apple issued a fix for it recently. I had seen it once or twice, had to hard reboot to get it back. Is that a crash? I don't know, but it's got the same effect.

Maybe calling it a FREEZE might be more appropriate, but regardless, it seems the fix is the same to get any sort of recovery.

A good question nevertheless.



- Patrick
======

 

[krs]

That's your opinion, and you are entitled to it. I, on the other hand, don't want the sidebar cluttered with toggles that I use ONCE and then never change again, which is how it works. As the OP said, he changed it and either didn't realize or forgot he had done so. So the toggle showed up as he rolled the mouse over it, then disappeared again when not needed. Sweet!

However....
If you are concerned about clutter, just below that disappearing Show/Hide toggle, I have a total of 14 (!!!) eject symbols, one for each external volume I have connected to the Mini; if anything, that is a lot more clutter than showing either a single "show" or "hide".
Not terribly consistent.

I suppose we can discuss the ins and outs of the Mac's UI all day.
In general, I find the macOS has been slowly going 'downhill' since Lion - for me SnowLeopard was the last really solid macOS release.

I'm actually looking for the next "really solid"macOS to move all the Macs in the family to - thinking that might be High Sierra, but the jury is still out on that.