I’ve had this problem for several years across 4 macs. I sync my ~/Documents folder with syncthing. On previous macs I had used Nextcloud and other tools, so I was never sure what could be causing the problem. But on my 2 new macs I have only ever had syncthing working on this folder.
The behaviour I experience is that if I run open ~/Documents/Personal, Finder opens at the “Computer” root, instead of at the specified folder. This is true for every program also, so when I save a download from Safari into a folder, then download another file, Finder has jumped back to “Computer” each time. It seems to only happen in ~/Documents and not other folders.
I have no idea if syncthing is really the cause of this. Certainly stopping syncthing doesn’t change anything. But I know that this problem did not occur on the new macs before I installed syncthing (and of course dozens of other programs).
I’m hoping that by posting here, somebody might have a suggestion of how I can debug this issue. Re-installing my mac and omitting syncthing (or other programs one at a time), seems like a pretty radical option. I could try uninstalling syncthing, is there a way I can do that while also backing up my config?
If anybody has any tips on how to google for the problem, that would also be great. So far I’m unable to find a single mention of this issue anywhere online, and given that I had it now on four separate machines, I’m kinda baffled. I’ve asked ChatGPT for a list of search terms, and I still can’t find a single person reporting this issue anywhere.
I’m pretty darn sure this isn’t Syncthing related. You can back up your Syncthing configuration (see Syncthing Configuration — Syncthing v1.29.1 documentation) and uninstall, but I would respectfully posit that to be a waste of effort.
The search terms I used were finder window opens root, where I found this discussion: (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254521828?sortBy=rank). I’m wondering if your ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file is corrupt. Backing that file up to external media, deleting it, emptying Trash and rebooting would be my next troubleshooting step.
Another discussion I found (https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/s2eg4k/how_do_i_stop_finderapp_from_randomly_resetting/) reminded me that Finder will do that if it times out trying to access a folder. Assuming that your ~/Documents folder is on local storage, I would want to rule out some weird disk or filesystem issue. I would check for messages in Disk Utility, try to repair the drive there, or perhaps use Apple Diagnostics to check for errors.
Thanks for the detailed response and the links. Being able to save my config is great. I also agree that it’s unlikely that syncthing causes this issue, so uninstalling and reinstalling seems like a waste of time.
I read the other two threads, thanks for the links. If I understood correctly the first thread is about finder windows which change their locations overnight. It also seemed like the author couldn’t find a solution, so at least I’m not the only one with super weird finder behaviour and no solution!
I have this behaviour on several Macs, so it seems like finder plist corruption is unlikely to me. I’m not syncing that folder, so I can’t imagine a scenario where the corruption jumps from one machine to another. There was talk about safe mode in the first thread, I tried that now. Here’s a really crazy thing, I have the same problem in safe mode.
Just to be sure, I’ve just deleted the finder plist file and restarted into safe mode. Holy smokes, that worked! At least in safe mode.
I am shocked. I assumed because this has happened on so many machines that it must be some super bizarre issue. But apparently it was an easy fix! Thanks so much @chaos, your message prompted me to try it even though I didn’t expect it to work. I’ll do some more tests and report back if this fix works on all my machines.
