Broken Finder search scope (?)

[MariaSolOs]

I apologize in advance if this isn't really a bug, but just a result of my own ignorance.

I've been trying out https://macos-defaults.com/finder/fxdefaultsearchscope.html, yet I don't see any noticeable changes in the way the search is rooted. The way I've been testing it is via a terminal and cd-ing to a certain directory and then launching the Finder. The search always begins from "This Mac", despite me running defaults write com.apple.finder FXDefaultSearchScope -string "SCcf".

Is this because I'm misunderstanding the setting, launching the Finder in an unintended way, or a bug...?

[yannbertrand]

I've just tried on a M1 Pro MacBook 2021, macOS Sonoma 14.3.1 (23D60). The command is working correctly.

Did you run killall Finder after the command you used? Another small difference could be the double quotes surrounding the key "FXDefaultSearchScope".

By the way this config is global and not scoped to the current folder, so you can just open the base folder and check it out.