Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's learn some new Finder tips, tricks,
and techniques that you can use everyday. I couldn't do MacMost without a great group
of supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read about the Patreon Campaign,
join us, and get exclusive content. So let's jump right into it. You probably already know how to create a
new folder. You go to File, New Folder. Once you have a new folder you can move items
into it. But you could also select multiple items. I'm going to hold the Command key down to
select multiple files here and then you can go to File, New Folder with Selection. That will create a new folder and instantly
move all of the selected files into that folder. If you want to get information about a file
you can select it and use Command i or File, Get Info to open up a window for that file. But if you want to get info on another file
you have to select that file and use Command i again there. You'll actually end up with multiple info
windows open. One for each file. But you can also use an Inspector. An Inspector will change depending upon what
file you have selected. So that's the same menu item but instead of
Get Info you hold the Option key down and it changes to Show Inspector. So Option, Command i. So with a file selected you do Option, Command
i and it looks like the Get Info window except that it has a smaller bar at the top letting
you know it's a pallet window that will remain on top and stay there. So now I can select a different file and you
can see it changes to show information about that file. Now if you want to get the full path to a
file you can do it one of three ways. One way to do it is to hold the Command key
down and click on the window title here and that will give you a list going all the way
up to the top level. You can also go to View and then Show Path
Bar and then see the path at the bottom of the window. You can also go to View and Customize Toolbar. Then drag and drop the Path button into the
Toolbar like that. Then you can click there and get a list going
all the way up. Now let's say you want to navigate up a level. You can use this Path button here. You can Command click on the title there and
select something there. Or you can double click on any item you see
here in the Path Bar. But an easier way to go up one level is to
use Command Up arrow which is go Enclosing Folder. So Command Up takes you up a level. Now I showed you the Path Bar. There's another Bar at the bottom as well. You can turn that on with Show Status Bar. This will give you information like how many
items are selected, how many items are in the current folder that you're viewing, and
the amount of space available on your drive. In addition you get a handy little slider
there that will allow you to change the size of the icons in the current view. This only works in Icon View so you see it
goes away if I go to List View or Column View. Now when you create a new Finder window with
Command N or File, New Finder Window it will go to a certain location. You can set that by going to Finder Preferences
and there under General you have New Finder Window, Show and you can choose all these
different folders and even Other and choose any folder that you want to be the Default
location for a New Finder Window. When in List View notice that folders and
files are intermingled depending upon how you have things sorted. Here I'm sorting by Name. You can tell because the little arrow is there
in the Name column. But if you go to Finder Preferences and then
go to Advanced you can change it so that folders are kept on top but only when sorting by name. So select that and now see that these folders
are here on top. If I change it to sorting by something else
like Date Modified you can see that's no longer the case. Also in Column View you see it puts the folders
there at the top as well because Column View is always sorted by Name. Now one problem in Column View is sometimes
the columns aren't wide enough to fit files with longer names. Sometimes they're too wide and there's a lot
of blank space there. You can drag the line between columns to adjust
it. But if you click on the line it will snap
to be the perfect size. If you hold the Option key down and double
click on any of the line it will do it for all of the columns at once. Now this also works in List View. If I go to List View notice how much space
here I have for the name column. So I could adjust by dragging the line here
at the top. But also I can double click it and it will
then snap to the perfect size for that column. While we're here in List View you can add
more columns to this by going to View, Show View Options. You're going to get Show Columns here and
you can add all sorts of different columns like different dates, versions, all sorts
of different things that can be included there so you can customize this to have the exact
columns that you want. Notice too that you can adjust the icon size
here so I can make it a larger icon. I can adjust the text size as well. You can do that in all the different views. So I could go to the Icon View and adjust
icon size there and text size there as well. The same thing for Column View. I can adjust the text size there to make it
larger text in Column View. Now everybody knows how to use Undo. When you're working in a word processor, for
instance, you delete some text and then use Undo to get the text back. But Undo works in the Finder as well for all
sorts of different actions. So for instance say I take this file and I
move it into this folder. I can now go to Edit, Undo or Command Z and
it will come back here to this level. I can do the same thing with renaming a file. I can Rename it and decide that was a mistake. I can do Command Z and undo the rename. Even deleting a file I can select it and drag
it to the Trash or Command Delete to throw it away. I can do Edit, Undo to get it back. Now the Trash also has an Undo built into
it. If I go to the Trash here and I look at what
I have in the trash I can select a file and then go to File and then Put Back. Put Back will actually return the file to
wherever it was when I deleted it. So I don't have to remember the exact location
and drag it out of the trash to that. I can just use Put Back to get the file back
to where it was originally and out of the trash. If you want to Duplicate or move files around
you can certainly do that with dragging and dropping. But you can also use Copy and Paste. Select a file like this and you could do Edit,
Copy or Command C. Then you can go to another location here, go into that location, and
then do Edit, Paste Item and that will make a copy of it here. If I hold down the Option key then Paste changes
to Move Item Here. So Command V will paste a copy of it and Option
Command V will actually move the original item to the new location. I already showed you an example of customizing
the toolbar but another way you can customize the toolbar is by adding files, folders, or
even apps to the toolbar. So, for instance, if I wanted to add this
file to the toolbar I could hold the Command key down and drag it up here and you can see
a Plus button appears. If I put the file there I can open the file
now by clicking on it in the toolbar. I can Command drag and bring it all the way
down to remove it. I could do the same thing with a folder. I can Command drag the folder up there. Now I can drag things into the folder or click
on the folder once to actually go to that location. You can also add applications to the toolbar. Just go in Applications to see all your Applications. Then pick an app that you want to use to open
files with. So, for instance, I can pick BBEdit. I hold the Command key and drag it to the
top and now it's in there. I can open that file by dragging to that icon
in the toolbar. A lot of times things get messy. We have different windows with the Finder
on it here. We can merge all those into Tabs by going
to Window, Merge All Windows. This puts all of the open Finder windows into
different Tabs. So it's a good way to clean things up without
closing Finder windows. Now if you have a messy folder like this one
you can do a one time cleanup by using the View and Clean Up or Clean Up By. Then you can choose how you want it to cleanup. So I can do by Name and it's going to clean
it all up, put them all in order one after the other, in the grid all sorted by name. I also could choose Sort By and then choose
name and it will keep things sorted. So for instance if I were to change this file
name here you could see it's going to move everything around to keep everything in alphabetical
order. But remember to go back to Sort By None if
you want to then arrange things anyway that you want. Now you probably know if you go to Column
View you get a Preview window here on the right. So anything you select is then going to be
Previewed there. But you can get that in other views as well. For instance I can go to List View here and
go to View and then select Show Preview. Now you can see that same preview there on
the right. I can do the same thing even in Icon View. You can see it appears there. You can toggle that On and Off with View,
Show or Hide Preview. If you're looking at things in List View you'llnotice
that a typical column to have is Size. Size only shows for files. For folders you don't see a size. You can turn that on by going to View and
then Show View Options. Then there's a checkbox for Calculate All
Sizes. Once you turn that on then you see all the
sizes for folders. When you Sort By Size it will put the folders
properly in their place according to size. Now let's say you've added a bunch of items
to the Trash but you want to review them first before emptying the Trash. However there's a file that you really want
to delete right now. You can skip the Trash by selecting a file
and then going to File, and you'll see here where it is Move to Trash or Command Delete
key. But if you hold the Option key down that changes
to Delete Immediately. Option Command Delete will delete that file
immediately, skipping the Trash, and leaving all the files that are currently in the trash
right where they are. Now we're always looking for ways to differentiate
files and folders from each other. A handy way to do so is to use emoji in file
names because you can use any characters you want here. So I have a folder here and certainly I can
use regular letters and numbers but I could also use Control Command Space to bring up
the Emoji Viewer and add any emoji I want to this folder name. So, for instance, I can search for something
that makes sense like a speaker icon here for an audio file and I can add it in. Now it makes it a little bit easier to find
that folder. I could do that with all my folders and files
if I want. One last tip here. A lot of us forget that we have items in the
trash. We'll throw items away and then we'll plan
to go through them later. But the trash ends up filling up and our hard
drive runs out of space. You can setup the trash so that when files
have been in there for thirty days they're automatically deleted. Go into Finder, Preferences and then go to
Advanced. There's an option here to Remove Items from
the Trash after 30 Days. This is definitely something I use. It still gives you a safety buffer of 30 days
for anything you put into the trash so you can undo any mistakes. But it also means that you don't have to remember
to empty the trash. So I hope you learned a few new ways to use
the Finder to manage your files and folders. If you have a favorite Finder trick that I
didn't mention share it with everybody below in comments.
