Folder Aliases in Dock or List View cannot be expanded?

Question

I have been increasingly frustrated with the fact that you cannot expand a folder alias in the Finder "List View" via the "expand triangle" or in the dock. If I add a folder to the dock that contains folders and aliases to other folders, I can drill-down the "real" folders, but cannot on the aliases.

Does anyone know a way to make this work?

Answer 1

This is a known bug and is even mentioned in John Siracusa's review on Snow Leopard.

Answer 2

A small update to this 10-year old question. This works for macOS 10.13, possibly earlier.

If I have a folder in the Dock, and create a an alias in that folder, then in the List view in the Dock, the alias is shown as an alias without a triangle. I can't browse it, like the OP indicated.

However, if I remove the folder from the Dock, and re-add it to the Dock, then the alias suddenly shows up as a folder with a triangle, and I can browse through it.

Answer 3

In my case there is a normal folder "Current Projects" which is on the dock. In that folder are aliases to various project folders. Some of these folders expand in the dock's grid-view, some don't. I found out it depends on how you create the alias.

If I create an alias by dragging the folder to the "Current Projects" folder while pressing Command+Option the alias doesn't expand in the grid-view. I I create the alias by selecting "Make Alias" in the context menu and moving then this alias to the "Current Projects" folder. This alias does expand in the grid view of the dock. Weird.