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Bugs & Fixes: Default folder changes in Mountain Lion

17.08.2012
Apple wants you to use iCloud as the location for your saved documents. If you arent willing to cooperate, Apple applies some pressure to get you to change your mind.

Case in point: The Open and (especially) the Save dialogs for apps that support new Documents in the Cloud feature (also called ). Apple has changed the rules here, as compared to how things worked in previous versions of OS X.

When you select to save a new Untitled document, the Save dialog opens with a folder location already selected. In OS X 10.7 Lion and all prior versions of OS X, if youve never changed this default location, its probably your Documents folder. If you do change the folder location, the app typically remembers your decision. This means the next time you attempt to save a new document, the default folder will be the location you last chose. This is what most users want and expect. So far, so good.

Starting in Mountain Lion, apps that support the new Documents in the Cloud feature make iCloud the default location for saving a new document. Apple is making a not-so-subtle suggestion here. Im fine with that. The problemat least its a problem from my perspectiveis what happens if you change the folder location. Nothing happens. The next time you try to save a new document, the default folder will once again be iCloud. No matter what you do, its always iCloud. If you dont want to use iCloud, this means you have to remember to shift the location every time you create and save a new document.

Note: This iCloud restriction applies just to saving new documents. Saving an already saved document, or using the Duplicate or Save As commands, continue to work as expected: They save to the location where the file currently exists. Further, if you know that you never intend to use iCloud for storing documents, you can disable the feature by unchecking Documents & Data in iClouds System Preferences. This should avoid having apps save to iCloud by default.

Applications that support this always-iCloud feature include Apples own TextEdit and Preview as well as third-party apps such as . This is apparently an OS X imposed standard that will likely spread across most apps as they begin to adopt Documents in the Cloud.