Finder has stopped being a spatial file manager for a long time, but still mistakenly tries to behave like one in too many places, probably because of lingering legacy code more than a particular intent.
IMHO they should simply rip the spatial bits out entirely and it would immediately become a better file manager purely from the restored consistency.
I was just today complaining that Finder seems to want to be a file browser, but it makes it nearly impossible to actually browse the file system. Ridiculous dropping down to ls in a terminal on a supposedly polished OS.
Each folder has a remembered display state. If in large icon mode, you can drag icons around into the positions you want and they'll stay that way the next time you visit the folder.
The idea is that it's not directories that are just bags of files, but files occupy spatial locations in folder windows.
Ah, this makes sense. Am I hallucinating that columns widths used to be remembered many years back? In other words, in column view, if you resized a column for a given folder, close Finder, and reopen to that folder—it would remain the same width.
Finder is mostly unusable for any directory containing long filenames since it doesn’t remember this. But I swear it used to. Am I misremembering?
I just tested and for me they seem to be remembered for my Downloads folder. Weirdly, at first it didn't seem to be remembered, but then I pressed ⌘+J to look at the view settings, and now when I change a column width it seems to be remembered...
IMHO they should simply rip the spatial bits out entirely and it would immediately become a better file manager purely from the restored consistency.