Column widths shrink with every launch of FCP.

Sure. It brings up the right-click menu on whatever is presently highlighted, aka the focus. Suppose you're in The Finder, and the file at the top is highlighted. Now, use the down arrow key to move the highlight bar to a different file. The context-menu shortcut is equivalent to a right-click on that file, no matter the position of the mouse pointer. It's the equivalent of the context menu key in Windows. Many Windows keyboards have a dedicated key for that. It's on the bottom row among the modifier keys. It can result in mouse use, which means less damage to the nerves and tendons and such in your mouse hand. It can be more efficient, just like the multitude of keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut. Oh, the newest Apple keyboards for the Mac now have a dedicated key for this. It's the upper left key in the home/end/pgup/pgdn key cluster. If you don't have that key, you can press Ctrl-Return or Ctrl-Enter. I will soon upgrade and try it out.

See the following link for more on this.

https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/sequoia-open-contextual-menu-native-mac-keyboard-shortcut/37657

First of all, a correction: the first column grows, pushing part of the last column that's visible in the browser to the right a bit, hiding 1/2 or more characters.

Usually not.

I just tried a number of formats. Sizes include 1440x1080 (usually 18 fps converted in the project to 29.97 fps), 1920x1080, 640x265 23.98 fps, 720x540 24 fps, 1440x1080 24 fps, 1080 HD 30 p, 640x480 30 fps, and probably even more. All increase the width of the first column upon quitting FCP and reopening it, with the result of hiding 1/2 or more characters in the last visible column!

None are square.

Title? I only used an FCP title one time, long ago, in a movie that's "collecting dust" or "on the back burner". I wish I could afford the music. I should contact the composer and just ask, but I think it's likely to be something like $60,000.

Back to the titles: So far, other than the aforementioned presently on-ice movie, I have only used titles that were already in the footage. Most of my footage is Super 8 and reg 8mm transfers of movies taken over 40 years ago, some have their own titles (plastic letters!). Others are traditional "family movies". But why would a title affect anything? It's in the movie, no? Why would that affect the columns? OTOH, I've seen far stranger things with Windows/MS-DOS.

They are clearly not the same. You can see that the right most digit in each line is cut off in the AFTER screenshot.

BEFORE: 14:25:25

AFTER: 14:25:

These are not the same. And every time I open FCP it gobbles up another 1/2 a character or sometimes several characters.

The BEFORE line has 3 2-digit numbers. The AFTER line has 2 2-digit numbers. 3 .ne. 2.

Automatically eat a digit? Why would anyone program it that way?

Anyway, let me give you an example. Suppose you bought a wall clock and put it up on the wall in your office. You're sitting at your desk doing all sorts of wonderful things on your Mac. But you want the time (assume you don't have it on the top bar). You turn your head, look at the clock, read the time, and go back to the Mac. But that's not what the Apple developers have given us. In their world, there is a curtain over the face of the clock. To read the clock, you have to get up, walk over to the clock, lift the curtain, read the time, go back to your desk. But the curtain is forced to cover the face of the clock when you let go of it. So to read the time, you have to get up and do all that every single time.

The column width problem is a little like this. Yes, I can manually re-adjust the columns. BUT WHY IS IT CHANGING AT ALL IN THE FIRST PLACE?

I'm not the least bit worried. I am annoyed that such a, uh, not-so-great thing happens in the first place. I was -- and I knew it was a long shot -- hoping there was some check box that could fix it, like <> leave the columns alone!

Oh, so I'll just have to get up to lift the curtain every time I want to read the time on the clock.

The Mac costs big bucks. I expect better than to have to resize the columns in the Finder, Mail, Final Cut, and who knows what else. I expect an efficient user interface.

"For me, it's a simple minor adjustment like moving the "Plate" on my desk to a position where it's easier to eat."

And if it happened every time you went to pick up a piece of something to eat?

The wall clock was just an example to illustrate the point. I'm glad to see that you, too, would find the curtain in front of the clock for no good reason annoying. It makes a difference if the annoyance is accidental or deliberate. It seems as if Apple purposefully put it there. Imagine the upstairs neighbor is blasting some awful music you don't like every day all day. Now imagine he goes on vacation for two weeks, and leaves his stereo blasting. Would you be equally annoyed?

This column bit is annoying because I can't help but think it's a design decision, like graying out active shortcuts, and the shortcut for going through the menu stuff on the upper right only reaches a few icons in when it used to go most or all of the way. (The mouse is a little slower and can cause damage to your hand and wrist.) And it seems to be even worse in Sequoia. (I think it's Ctrl-F7 with the default key assignments. I changed mine to F18.) Just one more: Flags in Mac Mail. The colors of the flags used to be in spectral (or rainbow) order. Easy! Efficient! Looks great! But one day the order was scrambled. Looks worse, less efficient, takes more effort. I find it hard to believe this is a bug. It was most likely a design decision. It also violates the KISS philosophy, credo, paradigm, or whatever. So is the column width thing a bug? To be honest, I don't really know. Again, I wrote here hoping for a solution. Is that so terrible?

There was a great scene on "Everyone Loves Raymond" where Raymond tells Debbie that his parents are annoying (they're moving next door). She says it's only once in a while. Raymond says, yeah if it's just once, and he lightly hits her on the nose, but it's much worse if it happens again and again, and he hits her on the nose repetitively like maybe 2 or 3 times a second. The point is then successfully made.

" I think it's better to get used to it than to get frustrated, but you're free to choose what you want. "

Just like when someone tells you to smile. Oh, you shouldn't have food near the computer. Bad practice! But you're free to choose what you want.

Many, many people have been requesting things Apple should add to Final Cut over the years. Many of them rather simple things. And Apple does nothing. I've given plenty of feedback about a number of things. Sometimes they get fixed or added; usually, they don't. Some of them make an enormous difference.

There are all sorts of keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut to speed things up. To make the app more efficient. But here, nothing.

I've already put this in the feedback. I was hoping, and I knew it was a long shot, that there would be an easy solution to this, like unchecking the box that says, well, never mind.