Most of us think of the Finder as just another part of OS X; the window that pops up to help us find our files. But it's definitely got more use to it than just a file browser. Read on for a few tricks you can learn today to help you utilize Finder's hidden features.
Quick Look is one of the most useful features of OS X, and it’s one we use all the time in the office. Select a file and just hit the spacebar to preview it in a pop-up window without having to wait for any apps to open fully. It’s great for checking a bit of information from a document, or for finding the correct document if you’ve got lots of similar ones next to each other. Select more than one file by clicking the first then holding command while selecting others, and you can preview them all at once as an index sheet.
OS X Lion adds a brand-new feature called All My Files that displays when you open a new Finder window. You can use it to find files a lot more quickly by rearranging it. Click on the icon showing six squares and two lines and you can arrange All My Files by Kind (the default), Name, Application, Size and more. Depending on how you like to work, these can help you locate things much more quickly. You can also sort any folder in these ways by right-clicking and choosing Arrange By.
There’s a search bar in the top-right corner of the Finder window that you can use to find files easily. Type in a search term and it begins scouring your files, but you can narrow what it looks for by hitting the + button underneath. For example, you can search only in specific folders, search for recently modified files, search for a name or something in the content of the file. If you’re searching for a PDF file, you can specify to only look for that file type, for example, immediately narrowing down the possibilities.
This tip is great for helping you quickly identify a file. Right-click (or control-click) on any file in Finder and you’ll notice that a Label option becomes available in the menu. This enables you to add a color to the name of the file or folder, which initially helps to differentiate it from those around it. But you can also arrange the files in a folder by Label, so all the green files would be grouped, for example. You can also search (see tip 3) for Labels or add them to a smart folder (see tip 10), but take note that they’re in the "Other" list as "File label".
You can browse Finder with a few different view options, which can be switched between using the toolbar at the top of the window. What works best depends on the type of files you’re working with. You can have a grid of icons, a long list, multiple columns, and Cover Flow, which previews files as images in the window (similar to album covers in iTunes). When you’ve found one that works for you, you can tweak it. For example: the Cover Flow image size can be adjusted; the icon size can be made bigger or smaller by right-clicking and selecting View Options; and you can adjust the spacing in the column view by holding command and dragging them across.
It’s worth making good use of the Favorites sidebar in Finder. It can be found on the left side of the window, and comes with several shortcut presets, including All My Files and AirDrop in Lion, as well as Documents, Movies, Music and others. It’s also where plugged-in devices will appear, including your USB drives, CDs and DVDs. You can add any file or folder you like to it simply by dragging the folder into the sidebar, but be sure you highlight a space between two other Favorites, or you’ll move the file/folder instead of adding it to the sidebar. To remove anything from your Favorites, just hold command and drag it out of the sidebar – it doesn’t matter where. You’ll see the shortcut vanish in a puff, but don’t worry too much: the original folder will still be exactly where you last left it.
The toolbar at the top of the Finder window can be adjusted to suit the way you use your Mac. Just right-click it and choose "Customize toolbar" and you’ll see extra options you can drag in, such as a button to burn DVDs, connect to servers or create a new folder. You can even add apps or files you want quick access to by dragging them onto it, so they can be accessed with a single click in the future.
To remove them, simply hold command and drag them out of the window.
Smart folders are a special kind of folder that don’t actually contain any files themselves, but instead contain the results of saved searches, providing access to the files therein. For example, you could set up a smart folder of all the photos on your Mac taken during the last month, of all the PDFs you have stored in various places, or of all documents containing the word "invoice". The files stay wherever you stored them, but this makes them easy to find with one click. To create a smart folder, go to File > New Smart Folder, or hit command+option+N.
Keeping yourself smart and organized with a good system of folders can seem like a hassle, but it’s really worth doing. Plus, it’s not that difficult or fiddly to do at all. You can right-click in any folder and choose New Folder, and then drag and drop any files into it. If you have a bunch of loose files, though, there’s an easier way. Select all the files you want to be in the new folder at the same time by holding command and clicking them, then right-click and choose New Folder from Selection.
Once you’re comfortable using Finder’s features, you can speed things up by learning keyboard shortcuts for many simple tasks. You can open a new Finder window with command+N, for example, or close a window with command+W. To create a new folder, hit option+command+N, or to delete something, hit command+delete. You can rename a selected item by hitting shift and then typing the new name, and we’ve already talked about hitting the spacebar for Quick Look. Undo any mistakes, such as moving a file to the wrong place, with command+Z.
dscottfrank
March 17, 2012 at 11:28am
Is the "New Folder with Selection" a Lion-only feature, or will it work in Snow Leopard? I can't seem to make it happen in my slightly older OS. I've been looking for this feature for a long time.
thiagoaraujos
March 08, 2012 at 1:59pm
Some corrections and additions: Renaming files is done with the return key, and opening files is done with command + o. As every windows user experienced at least once, that avoids opening multiple files by accident with the return key. Creating a new folder is done with command + shift + n, like our friend above said.
