Finder is fundamental to the macOS experience. It’s how you get around, so it should be as efficient as possible. Here’s how to make Finder work for you by tweaking a few settings.
The Finder sidebar is where all of your favorite local folders, iCloud Drive files, and connected volumes appear. You’ll also find network locations, mounted disk image files, and a section for tags.
If you can’t see the Finder sidebar, you might have hidden it. Show it again by selecting a Finder window and then clicking View > Show Sidebar in the menubar at the top of the screen. You can resize the sidebar by clicking and dragging the vertical divider.
Learn how to customize the Finder sidebar by using drag and drop to add or remove favorite folders and reorder pinned locations. See a full list of locations and toggle them on and off via Finder > Settings in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Right-click (or Control+click) the toolbar at the top of a Finder window and select “Customize Toolbar…” to see a full list of functions and dividers that you can drag and drop into the toolbar. While you’re at it, you can drag existing buttons out of the toolbar to remove them.
If you mess up, simply drag the default toolbar setup at the bottom of the screen into the toolbar at the top and start again. Get creative and make a minimalist toolbar, or add dedicated buttons for functions like “Get Info” and “Eject” if you’re tired of relying on context menus and keyboard shortcuts.
Use View > Show Status Bar to add the status bar to the bottom of every Finder window. This shows a summary of how many files and folders you’re currently looking at, plus how much free space is left on the volume (whether that’s a specific volume, iCloud Drive, or even disk images).
Lastly, turn on View > Show Path Bar to show the current path at all times, which appears above the Status Bar. There are some good reasons to enable the Finder path bar like simpler navigation and being able to drag and drop directly into higher-level folders.
Change Views and Grouping
Views and grouping are powerful features for better navigating your Mac. Finder has four main views, which you can change using the views toolbar button or the View menu at the top of the screen: Icons, List, Columns, and Gallery.
Icons is the default view, while Gallery introduces a preview window that’s great for navigating through lots of images. Columns shows the current folder and the higher-level folders you had to navigate through to get there, which makes it easy to move files around and orient yourself.
List is arguably the most useful view. When you enable it, you’ll see a list of files and folders and information presented in columns at the top of the window. Click a column to reorder files by that metric, with repeated clicks toggling between ascending and descending order. Right-click on this area to add even more columns and click and drag these headers to reorder them horizontally.
In addition to these different views, you can also group files by certain criteria. Do this using the “Group” icon in the toolbar, or using View > Use Groups followed by View > Group By.
You can then group items by metrics like Kind or Date Created. Best of all, you can combine this feature with the List view so that you can group and sort your files at the same time. This makes it easy to do things like group by date created and sort by size.
Your sorting preferences are tied to each folder. So you’ll need to set these independently, which is neat since it means you can use List view to sort by “Date Added” in Downloads, use Gallery view to navigate media folders, and stick to plain old Icons view for the Applications folder.
Head to View > Show View Options to get a better overview of these options and change the icon and text size (again, on a per-folder basis).
Show Hidden Files
Sometimes you need to access hidden files, but you might not want to look at them all of the time. You can quickly toggle them on in Finder using the Command+Shift+. (dot) keyboard shortcut. Hit it again to make them disappear.
Change the Default Finder Window Location
Select a Finder window and then click Finder > Settings at the top of the screen and use the “General” tab to change the “New Finder windows show” option to whatever you want to see whenever you open a new Finder window (or a tab, using Command+T).
You can choose from common locations, your Mac (which shows your internal and external drives, mounted images, and network locations), or any folder you want using the “Other” setting.
Favor Tabs over Windows (Or Don’t)
You’ll find an “Open folders in tabs instead of new windows” option under Finder > Settings > General. Enable it so that when you hold Command and double-click on a folder, the location will open in a tab rather than a window (disable it if you’d rather this didn’t happen).
You can still easily open new Finder windows using the Command+N keyboard shortcut, by right-clicking the Finder dock icon, or by holding Option when you double-click a folder.
Change Default Search Location
The search bar within the Finder toolbar is useful, but its default behavior of only searching the current folder doesn’t necessarily make sense to everyone. Use Finder > Settings > Advanced to change “When performing a search” to “Search this Mac” for a system-wide approach.
Alternatively “Use the Previous Search Scope” is a hybrid of the two, where Finder will always default to the last search criteria you last used (and when you change it, the default search will also change).
Tags might just be the best Finder feature you’re not using. Open a Finder window then head to Finder > Settings > Tags to customize your tags. Right-click (Control+click) on a tag to rename it, and change the colors to match your preferred color scheme. Enable and disable tags in the sidebar using the checkbox.
Once organized, you can apply tags to files using the Tags button in the toolbar or right-click (Control+click) context menu.
Tags are ideal for quickly recalling a set of files. Use them to group files for projects, track progress, and create smart folders that use tags to narrow down the results.
Add Quick Actions and Shortcuts
Two applications that can greatly improve your Finder workflow are Automator and Shortcuts. Automator has been part of the macOS furniture since 2005 (OS X Tiger). As the name suggests, Automator can automate all manner of tasks on your Mac.
By creating Quick Actions with Automator, you can add functions to the “Quick Actions” context menu that appears when you right-click (Control+click) an item. Save time using by Automator to create workflows that can do things like split or combine PDFs in a matter of clicks.
You can achieve many of the same tasks with Shortcuts, a similar app that’s also available on iPhone and iPad. How you go about this depends on what you’re trying to achieve, but the “Get Input” action can take a file input and the “Use as Quick Action” toggle can ensure the Shortcut shows up where you need it.
Automator and Shortcuts are great for manipulating images with Quick Actions. The fastest ways to resize and convert images on a Mac depend on both apps.
Make Quick View Even Better
Quick View is Finder’s secret weapon. With a file selected, hit the spacebar to preview the file without opening it. This works for a large number of file types including PDFs, images, and movie files. You can make Quick View even better by installing add-ons to vastly expand the list of supported file types.
Pin Finder to All Desktops
If you use multiple desktops on your Mac (and you really should be), you can pin the same Finder window to all desktops. To do this, right-click (Control+click) on the Finder icon in the macOS Dock and select Options > All Desktops. Now when you switch Desktops, your Finder window will move with you.
To undo the change, switch this setting back to “None.” Assigning apps to specific desktops is a great way to keep your Mac organized and boost productivity.
Have you recently come from Windows? Learn the differences between Finder and Explorer.
