In the end, it turns out for me that the classic explorer Tree View is the most intuitive. I know where things are as a sub-tree system. I get that hard links etc. complicate this and perhaps there are smart folders etc which do not fit this model well but I find I frequently want to “Go Up” in the hierarchy and this requires an uncomfortable shortcut on a Macbook (arrow key) or a menu button rather than a toolbar icon.

But these are complaints. The right answer is to see if I can build a file explorer for MacOS that behaves in the fashion I desire.

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simondotau 3 days ago | parent [-]

Once I got used to column view, I miss it on other operating systems. I don't feel like there's anything I can't do with two Finder windows in column view. And for everything else there's the terminal.

	▲	arjie 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		For the main pane? I used to have Windows Explorer with the column view in the main pane and the tree view on the left pane and it was perfect. I don't really mind Nautilus with the breadcrumbs on the top and columns in the main pane. But I think simply going up and down in a Finder window is quite hard unless you navigated there manually, but I'm usually in finder because of `open ~/Folder/Path` and so I end up manually going Cmd-G and typing my path in because it's too hard to navigate otherwise.
	▲	andrekandre 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		column view is the one saving grace of finder; the rest is best left untouched