A Mac with a View — and Preferences, Too
The type of icon display and the Desktop background that you choose affect how quickly your screen updates in the Finder. You can set and change these choices in the View Options window. From the Finder, choose View⇒Show View Options (or use the keyboard shortcut
+J).
The View Options window, like your old friend the contextual menu, is . . . well, contextual: Depending on what’s active when you choose it from the View menu, you see one of five similar versions (shown in Figure 21-2). From left to right, the figure shows the options for folders in icon view, folders in list view, folders in column view, folders in Cover Flow view, and the Desktop.

Figure 21-2: Your choices in the View Options windows for icon view, list view, column view, Cover Flow view, and the Desktop.
A handful of settings can affect the speed of your Mac or your ability to see what you want quickly:
Icon size: The smaller the icon, the faster the screen updates, especially if the folder has many graphic files with thumbnails (those little icon pictures that represent the big picture the file contains).
In the icon view of the View Options window, moving the Icon Size slider ...
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