Apps folder: View settings are always being reset

First of all, Finder uses a binary file format for this and you can't create the .DS_Store file yourself. Only Finder can do that (and usually will create it after you have first accessed the folder).

In case of the /Applications folder, it might be that you don't have administrator privileges which might prevent saving the .DS_Store file.

So you should check the permissions on this folder and set it to writeable by your user. This is not possible however if you're not the owner of your system.

I've searched the net and found other people having similar problems like you.

First thing suggested was to delete the Finder permissions file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

can you try to do that, then logout/reboot and tell me in a comment if the view settings persist?

Edit: even if you're currently the only user, it's possible that your computer had previous (now deleted users) with the admin rights set for some folders on your system including the /Applications folder. You then need to set the rights to your user. Usually changing the permission modes should not be necessary.

Finder view settings are stored in invisble .DS_Store files, in the parent of the folder being set. So the settings for /Applications are stored in /.DS_Store, and /Applications/.DS_Store holds the settings for subfolders of /Applications, such as /Applications/Utilities.

Normally you have write permission to these files in one of two ways:

• For system folders such as /Applications, the .DS_Store files have write access for members of the admin group, i.e. administrators.
• For folders that you create, you are the owner of the .DS_Store file.

The problem is that the permissions can get screwed up. One way is via the macOS Migration Assistant: the migration changes the permissions on some .DS_Store files to be owned by root, but with no write access granted to the admin group. This results in the symptoms you describe.

A fix is to first run this command:

 sudo find -x / -name .DS_Store -user root -exec chmod -v g+w {} \;

which will give the group write access to any .DS_Store files owned by root.

That still won't fix all of the files; there may be a few stragglers (such as, /.DS_Store) where the migration has changed the file to the wrong group, such as wheel instead of admin. You can fix that with the chgrp command, e.g.:

 sudo chgrp admin /.DS_Store