To get up and running with Path Finder first download and mount the Path Finder disk image. Installation is simple: drag the Path Finder application icon to your Applications folder. An alias to the Applications folder is provided within the DMG. Path Finder is only an Application and does not require any special components to be installed. Path Finder will happily co-exist with Apple's Finder, but as you become more comfortable with Path Finder you may eventually wish for it to take center stage. We have a handy guide for when you're ready.

Path Finder has a very friendly 30 day trial period. Demo days are counted as days of actual use and are not based on the length of times since you first launched Path Finder on your system.

This works around one of the more annoying things about time-specific demos - you may often find yourself downloading an application, launching it once, then getting too busy to play with it until after the demo has already expired.

If Path Finder has an incremental upgrade during your trial period, say from 5.0.9 to 5.1.0, the demo trial clock will reset. This way you don't have to decide to buy until you have used the application for thirty days without changes.

Before removing Path Finder make sure to reset the Preferences that tell the system to use Path Finder by default. Those settings are…

1. Path Finder > Finder > Show Finder Desktop, check this to make sure you can see the Finder desktop.
2. Path Finder > Hide Path Finder Desktop, check this to make sure Path Finder's desktop is not obscuring Finder's desktop.
3. Path Finder > Preferences > Reveal and uncheck "Set Path Finder as the default file viewer", to make sure any system broadcasts of "Reveal in Finder" go to the right place.
4. Path Finder > Preferences > General uncheck, if they are checked…
   • Launch Path Finder automatically after log in
   • Quit the Finder automatically at launch
   • Hide Finder's desktop

To remove all traces of Path Finder, delete the following (some of these may not be on your system)

1. App: /Applications/Path Finder.app
2. File: (home folder)/Library/Contextual Menu Items/Path Finder CM.plugin
3. Folder: (home folder)/Library/Application Support/Path Finder
4. File: (home folder)/Library/Preferences/com.cocoatech.pathfinder.plist
5. Folder: (home folder)/Library/Preferences/Path Finder
6. File: (home folder)/Library/Caches/com.cocoatech.PathFinder