We can manage the way the Finder displays objects using the FXPreferredViewStyle key in the com.apple.finder defaults domain. There are four options in the Finder drop-down for view style and these are Icons (icnv), List (nlsv), Columns (clmv), and Gallery (glyv).
Given that only communists use anything other than the list view, we’re going to set the default to that with a simple defaults command:
defaults write com.apple.finder FXPreferredViewStyle -string "nlsv"
To undo our change and allow it to default to the last view, we can simply delete the key:
defaults delete com.apple.finder FXPreferredViewSTyle
