The Case of the Disappearing Finder Window when Unmounting a Disk

A recurring frustration I've encountered is the disappearing finder window when I'm ejecting volumes. That and colleagues stealing our lab coffee mugs. But I digress.

Often, when I've been installing applications, or have external disks mounted, I'll eject them and all my finder windows appear to disappear. Very stupid behaviour from my favourite operating system, if you ask me.

As it turns out, it's actually very stupid behaviour by me: it turns out that this "bug" is actually a "feature"... and I'm not even being sarcastic.

In short, if you want to keep the Finder window open when you eject a volume, simply highlight another volume or folder before clicking the eject button in the sidebar. The OS is actually trying to help you be efficient, because if you eject the volume while the volume is highlighted in the sidebar it will close all open windows with content from that volume. This makes sense: given that you're ejecting the volume it seems obvious you no longer need the contents of that volume.

This was pithily explained in a posting in the Apple Support forums by Scott Radloff:

Mystery solved.