20 Tips To Get The Most Out Of The Finder On Mac.
Mac has a wonderful file manager called Finder that gives you a lot of options for managing and organizing your files. Most of the features in the app are enabled by default. However, some of them don’t, and you can let them use them in the Finder.
Learning about these new features will help you get the most out of the Finder app on your Mac.
Set Finder’s Default Folder
When you launch the Finder utility, it opens the default folder. More often than not, this is not the folder you are trying to open. Well, you can change that with a few clicks.
From a Finder window, click the Finder menu at the top and select Preferences.
Click on the General tab if you are not already there. Select the new default Finder folder from the New Finder Window drop-down menu.
The folder you selected will now launch every time you open Finder.
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Show file paths
Finder makes it easy to find the paths to any file on your Mac. This can be done in two ways.
Control-click the title bar of the Finder window.
Click the View menu at the top and select Show Path Bar. A bar will be added at the bottom showing the full path to the current directory.
There are many other ways to find out the file paths on your Mac as well.
Accessing Library Folder
Your Mac doesn’t make it easy to access the library folder, but there is a workaround to do this in Finder.
Option-click the Go menu at the top. This will allow you to select a library.
Clicking on this option will open the Library folder on your Mac.
Make Quick View Full Screen
By default, Quick Look does not open in full screen mode. However, there is a trick to make it move all over the screen.
Option-click the file you want to view, press the Spacebar.
Quick Look will open in full screen mode.
Change Search Options
By default, when you search, Finder searches your entire Mac. However, you can change this with an option.
Click the Finder menu and choose Preferences.
Click the Advanced tab and select the appropriate option from the drop-down menu when performing a search.
After that Finder will only search in the location that you specified by default.
Customize Toolbar
You can add more items to the Finder toolbar so that you can perform various operations on your files and folders.
Right-click the Finder toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar.
Select the items you want to add to the toolbar on the next screen.
The items you selected will now be added to your toolbar.
Integrate Finder Windows
If you want to merge multiple Finder windows open on your screen, you can do so quite easily.
Click the Window menu and select Merge All Windows.
Your multiple windows will be tabbed together in one Finder window.
Show status bar
The status bar shows the number of files in the directory and the total available storage space on your Mac.
Click the View menu and select Show Status Bar.
The panel will appear at the bottom of Finder windows.
Customize Searcher Tags
Tags help you find the files you want on Mac, and you can customize them as well.
Click the Finder menu and choose Preferences.
Go to the Tags tab and add, remove and customize tags as you wish.
Enable File Extensions
If you want to view file extensions in Finder, here’s how to enable it.
Click the Finder menu and choose Preferences.
Click the Advanced tab and enable Show All File Extensions.
Show hidden files
By default, hidden files are not shown in Finder, but you can turn on the option to show them.
Open the Terminal application and run the following command.
by default write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES; killall Finder
Finder will start showing hidden files.
Create folder outside of selection
If you want to put multiple files in a folder, Finder makes it easy.
Select all the files you want to put in a folder, right-click any file and choose New Selected Folder.
This will allow you to create a new folder with all the files you have selected.
Share files quickly
You don’t need to open any application to share files from Finder. Finder has a built-in sharing option.
Select the files you want to share and click the share icon at the top.
Select the service you want to share files with.
Save text as a file
Have you ever created a completely new text file just because you wanted to save text from a web page? With Finder, you no longer need to do this.
Select text on any web page and drag it to your desktop.
Finder will automatically create a text file with the text you selected.
Lock a file or folder
Locking a file or folder ensures that the item is not automatically moved or deleted.
Right-click a file or folder and select Get Info.
Check the Locked option on the next screen.
You will receive a notification when a file or folder is moved or deleted.
Create Smart Folders
Smart Folders save you a lot of time finding and listing all the files you need.
Click the File menu and select New Smart Folder.
Specify criteria for your folder and save the folder.
There are many ways to use Smart Folders on Mac.
Rename Multiple Files
Finder makes it easy to name multiple files at once.
Select the files, right-click any of them and select Rename X Items. X is the number of files you selected.
Choose how you want to rename the files.
Switch between open applications
You don’t need Dock access to switch between open applications on your Mac. Finder allows you to do this with a keyboard shortcut.
Press Command + Tab at the same time. You will be able to navigate between open applications.
Keep folders to the forefront when labeling
When you sort files by name, your folders don’t necessarily appear at the top. You can change this behavior with the .
Click the Finder menu and choose Preferences.
Click the Advanced tab and enable the Keep folders on top when sorting by name option.
Restart Finder to fix issues
If you ever run into any issues with Finder, restarting Finder will most likely fix the problem for you.
Open the Terminal application and run the following command.
killall Finder
It will close and then launch the Finder app on your Mac again.
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