The Finder is OS X’s central piece as much as the Explorer is in Windows. While I prefer Norton Commander style side by side file managers, I often used the Explorer in Windows and now am using the Finder whenever heavy editing or copying/moving of files isn’t involved. The Finder, like the Windows Explorer, is far from a perfect tool, but it can actually become a lot better when used correctly, when you apply some tricks and set preferences the right way.
As a Windows user, chances are that when you look at Finder, you are likely to see a Windows Explorer, just looking a bit different. I know I did. In turns out, the Finder is actually quite capable with lots of nifty functionality that you just don’t see at first. Once someone tells you that it’s there, you might actually start to consider using Finder as your primary file manager.
Before we start, here are some keys for you. The most important thing to know is that OS X uses ⌘ where you would use CTRL in Windows. Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, Redo etc. So it’s ⌘ and C or ⌘ and V instead of CTRL and C or CTRL and V.
Alt key ⌥ also referred to as ‘option’.
Control ⌃ also often shortened as CTRL.
Command ⌘ also often shortened as CMD or occasionally referred to as Apple key as older keyboards labeled it with the Apple logo instead of the command symbol ⌘.
Show Sidebar and Status Bar
The first thing you want to do is enable some options to show certain elements that are hidden by default: Sidebar, Status Bar and Path Bar. Open the ‘View’ menu and enable all three.
The Sidebar allows you to quickly switch between the most important folders, drivers etc. While at it, open the Finder’s preferences and switch to the ‘Sidebar’ tab to check all the elements you want the Finder to show on the Sidebar. Unlike Windows Explorer, the Sidebar does not allow you to expand selections nor is it a tree view. That’s where the Finder’s column view comes in, but more about that later.
You can easily add items to the Sidebar by selecting the item you want to add and pressing ⌘ and T or using ‘Add To Sidebar’ from the Finder’s ‘File’ menu.
The Status Bar at the bottom of the Finder window will show you how many items are in the current folder and how much space is left on the drive. I personally find the free space information very useful when working with different drives. What is even more important, the Status Bar shows a slider on the right side allowing you to quickly change the size of icons when in icon view. Very handy when viewing folders containing graphical files or photos.
Harness the power of the Path Bar
The Path Bar shows you where you are. If you are deep into a folder structure or just use a small Finder window, the folders in the Path Bar will automatically collapse. Hovering with your mouse over the collapsed folders will display their full name. While this is quite nice, it’s nothing to be really excited about, except that the Path Bar can do so much more. It is in fact an interactive element that can be used for navigation and file management.
By double clicking any folder on the Path Bar your Finder will switch to that folder. Double clicking a folder while holding ⌘ will open that folder in a separate Finder window thus allowing you quickly and easily operate on two windows when copying or moving files when you need it.
You can also drag files directly onto a folder in the Path Bar to move them into that folder or drag them while holding the alt key ⌥ to copy them to that folder. This is quite a powerful functionality that can save you a lot of time you would otherwise spend by opening and navigating new Finder windows.
Show Item Info
Another useful option you want to enable is ‘Show item info’ that you’ll find by switching to icon view and using ‘Show view options’ in Finder’s ‘View’ menu. I suggest you set it as default. What it will do is show additional information to any file based on the type of file. For example for graphics files you will see their resolution, for movies their duration and for folders it will show you how many items they contain.
Use the right view for the right content
When working with the Finder it is important to use the right view for the right content. Finder allows you to quickly switch between Icon, List, Column and Cover Flow using either the icon on the toolbar or pressing ⌘ and 1, 2, 3 or 4.
When you browse pictures, photos or video files, the icon view is a good choice, although Cover Flow might be a good fit as well, depending on the type of the pictures or videos you are browsing. When using Cover Flow, you can easily change the size of the cover flow element by simply grabbing the graphical area at the lower part and moving your mouse up and town to decrease and increase its size.
When managing files where file sizes, dates of creation etc. are of importance, the list view often is the best choice, same as in Windows Explorer.
When you need to get to some place deep in the folder structure or do something you would normally have done by expanding items in the Windows Explorer’s tree view, your best bet is Finder’s column view.
Arrange & Sorting
This one fits very nicely with the views. If you need to “sort” your files by size, date etc., you can do it the same way as you did in Windows Explorer by clicking the appropriate column once or twice to show you the files in ascending or descending order respectively.
However, when you are in a different view than list view, you can still arrange your files. Sure, Windows Explorer can do in other views than detailed view by now, but it just doesn’t tell you anything. Finder on the other hand provides you with meaningful separators so that you actually get an idea about file size range or how old the files are.
On top of that, when there are a lot of files within one separator, the Finder switches that separator into a cover flow type view and that way keeps things very tidy without the need to scroll and scroll. If you need to see all those cover flown items at once, simply click on ‘Show All’ on the right hand side of that separator.
The combination of arranging and sorting files used together allows for a great overview in certain situation when dealing with extensive file libraries. Not a feature or rather combination of features most users will use often, but it is worthwhile to know that it is there and that Arrange By and Sort By can be combined.
Navigating files & folders
You opened Finder, selected a file and pressed Enter, didn’t you? Yes, it does rename the file. No, it does not open the file. It is just annoying when such basic functionality is handled differently between major operating systems. Finder expects you to press ⌘ and O to open the file. Same when you want to enter a folder. However, don’t familiarize yourself with ⌘ and O. Use ⌘ and cursor down instead. It does the same thing, but when you familiarize yourself with that one, you can use ⌘ and cursor up to leave the folder and that will feel more intuitive then.
When you are in list view, you can also use cursor left and cursor right to expand and collapse folders.
Windows Explorer’s Enter and Backspace to accomplish the same things and F2 to rename an item are a lot quicker, but it is what it is. Finder tries to make up for that annoyance with spring-loaded folders, though.
While on the subject of doing things differently, you might not have a Del key on your Mac’s keyboard. If you wonder how to quickly delete a file, the answer is: ⌘ and backspace.
That being said, when you get used to the way OS X opens file/folders, it isn’t bad. When you are a keyboard person and you use cursor keys to navigate through your files, you’ll notice that using ⌘ with cursor down to open a file or enter a folder and ⌘ with cursor up to leave it actually is quite quick and intuitive. Combine that with fn and cursor up or cursor down for Page Up or Page Down and spacebar for preview and you find yourself navigating through your files with minimal movement of your hands. When you get back to Windows after a while, you will be annoyed about F2 and PgUp/PgDn being so far away. Go figure.
Spring-loaded folders
When you copy files from one place to another, you can copy them via ⌘ and C, navigate to the place you want to copy them to and paste them via ⌘ and V. That’s OK, but you can’t do that when you want to move files, as Cut is not available and pressing ⌘ and X will just result in an error beep. You can of cause open a second Finder window. Let’s face it, when copying and moving files around with Windows Explorer, we are all used to have multiple windows open.
Finder offers an alternative approach called spring-loaded folders. When you drag a file onto a folder and pause for a moment, the folder springs open. It’s quick and intuitive.
If you are copying or moving files through several folders, that moment you pause over a folder to have it spring open can get annoying, though. You can make the folder open instantly by pressing spacebar when you have your files over the folder.
You can also set the delay for sprint-loaded folders in the Finder’s preferences in the ‘General’ tab using the slider at the bottom. Hint: to move a file rather than copy it, hold ⌘ while dragging the file. The Command key modifies the Finder’s behavior from copy to move.
Get Info a.k.a. “Properties”
In Windows Explorer you used Alt and Enter to invoke an item’s properties to get detailed information about that file or folder. The Finder’s equivalent is Get Info and you invoke it by pressing ⌘ and I. Unfortunately the Get Info window doesn’t close by simply pressing ESC like Windows’ properties do. You have to press ⌘ and W, which is quite annoying and Windows clearly solved it better. What OS X does better is allowing you to have it open at all times, by pressing ⌥ and ⌘ and I. Alternatively use the Finder’s ‘File’ menu and hold down the alt key (⌥) to have ‘Get Info’ change to ‘Show Inspector’.
You get the “properties” window that will show information for every file you select allowing you to browse files while having their detailed information displayed instantly in a separate window.
Copy path to clipboard
Want to copy the current path to the clipboard to send it to a friend to tell him where he or she can find the file on their Mac? There is no easy way like in Windows Explorer where you just mark the path and press CTRL C.
In Finder you have to either use Item Info and mark the path there or open Terminal and drag the file or folder into the terminal window. That will display the full path in the command line and you can select it with your mouse and use ⌘ and C to copy it to the clipboard and then paste it into your app with ⌘ and V. You can also do it with a TextEdit document instead of Terminal, but you need to switch the document to plain text via ‘Make Plain Text’ from the ‘Format’ menu.
Quick Look
There is one key you want yourself to familiarize with: the spacebar. It is the default shortcut for Quick Look, OS X’s powerful preview. It will preview most of the common file formats, is very quick and you close it quickly by either hitting spacebar again or using ESC. To preview another file in the same folder, you don’t even have to close Quick Look, you can just navigate to the next file using the cursor keys. Really great for viewing files file by file while in list view.
Quick Look is quite powerful and depending on content allows you to do some interesting things, like showing page thumbnails when viewing PDF documents or scrolling through texts. When you select multiple files (such as pictures or movies), it will show you a grid icon that allows you to preview all of them.
Need to know how much space that folder occupies? Select it and press spacebar.
Using spacebar together with the alt key (⌥) will launch Quick Look in full screen mode. You can also switch it to full screen mode by using the full screen icon in the upper right corner of the Quick Look window or by using the pinch-out gesture on your trackpad.
Should Quick Look not be able to preview some of your files, just have a look for the right plugin on the net or try www.quicklookplugins.com or http://qlplugins.com.
Toolbar Tricks
Like most apps, Finder allows you to customize its toolbar via ‘Customize Toolbar…’ in the ‘View’ menu. I personally find it very useful to put New Folder and Get Info onto the toolbar.
If you look at the picture of my toolbar, you’ll notice a colorful icon left of the search field. That’s SimplyRAR’s icon, an app to handle RAR files. You can simply drag any app from your Applications folder onto the toolbar and launch it by just clicking on its icon. I find it very useful for apps I use a lot when dealing with files.
To remove an app from the toolbar, you have to use ‘Customize Toolbar…’ and drag the app outside the Finder window.
Apps are not the only thing you can put onto your Finder’s toolbar. You can for example drag folders there, too. This way you can have the places you use very often in your toolbar. Simply navigate to the folder you want and drag its icon from the title bar onto the toolbar. That’s it.
Use Labels
Labels allow you to mark files or folders with colors. You can for example mark important files to have them stand out from the rest of the files. Or you can mark frequently used places with colors. Marking folders with work or school related items and private items is another fine application of labels. The important thing however is, to not overuse labels. If you label most of your files and folders, you won’t do yourself any favors. Labels are best used rarely.
To label a file simply select a color under Labels in the Finder’s ‘File’ menu or right-click the file and use a color from the context menu. To remove a label from an item, select the X instead of a color.
You can change the label for each color in Finder’s preferences in the ‘Labels’ tab to fit your own preferences, i.e. change ‘red’ to ‘Important’.
Labels can be very useful, but it is the next version of OS X, 10.9 a.k.a. Mavericks, where they should shine. Mavericks will feature a redesign of labels and allow you tagging of files. What this means is you being able to use tags like you see on blogs for your files making searches much easier and less cumbersome.
Final Words
While the Finder might not be the perfect file manager, it is by far more capable than many users who switch from Windows think. Considering the changes to Finder we will see soon with OS X 10.9 Mavericks it will even get better, especially when it finally supports tabs. I admit I was quite surprised how good Finder is and find myself using Finder more and more while I use Disk Order less and less.
Second Bite 