The Finder is the first thing that you see when your Mac finishes starting up. It opens automatically and stays open as you use other apps. It includes the Finder menu bar at the top of the screen and the desktop below that. It uses windows and icons to show you the contents of your Mac, iCloud Drive, and other storage devices. It's called the Finder because it helps you to find and organize your files.
Open windows and files
May 26, 2020 When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you've used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos. Navigate to the location where you want the files to be stored. Click the Select button. Click the Close button to exit Preferences. To download a specific image that appears on a web page, move your pointer over the image, right-click, and choose Save Image As from the pop-up menu that appears.
The Silver Mac weblog explains how you can quickly change this directory to the desktop in one keystroke: If all you want is to save the file on your desktop, simply hit Command-D (Apple-D) on your. Set permissions for items on your Mac. Permission settings determine who can view and alter files on the computer. Permissions are an important factor on OS X and other.nix systems and defines the way the system handles users, files and devices. Assign permissions to users and groups. Select a disk, folder, or file, then choose File Get Info.
To open a window and see the files on your Mac, switch to the Finder by clicking the Finder icon (pictured above) in the Dock. Switching to the Finder also reveals any Finder windows that might be hidden behind the windows of other apps. You can drag to resize windows and use the buttons to close , minimize , or maximize windows. Learn more about managing windows.
When you see a document, app, or other file that you want to open, just double-click it.
Change how your files are displayed
To change how files are displayed in Finder windows, use the View menu in the menu bar, or the row of buttons at the top of the Finder window. You can view files as icons , in a list , in columns , or in a gallery . And for each view, the View menu provides options to change how items are sorted and arranged, such as by kind, date, or size. Learn more about customizing views.
When you view files in a gallery, you can browse your files visually using large previews, so it's easy to identify images, videos, and all kinds of documents. Gallery View in macOS Mojave even lets you play videos and scroll through multipage documents. Earlier versions of macOS have a similar but less powerful gallery view called Cover Flow .
Gallery View in macOS Mojave, showing the sidebar on the left and the Preview pane on the right.
Use the Preview pane
The Preview pane is available in all views by choosing View > Show Preview from the menu bar. Or press Shift-Command (⌘)-P to quickly show or hide the Preview pane.
macOS Mojave enhances the Preview pane in several ways:
- More information, including detailed metadata, can be shown for each file. This is particularly useful when working with photos and media, because key EXIF data, like camera model and aperture value, are easy to locate. Choose View > Preview Options to control what information the Preview pane can show for the kind of file selected.
- Quick Actions let you easily manage or edit the selected file.
Use Quick Actions in the Preview pane
With Quick Actions in macOS Mojave, you can take actions on a file without opening an app. Quick Actions appear at the bottom of the Preview pane and vary depending on the kind of file selected. Whats the best external hard drive for mac.
- Rotate an image
- Mark up an image or PDF
- Combine images and PDFs into a single PDF file
- Trim audio and video files
To manage Quick Actions, click More , then choose Customize. macOS Mojave includes a standard set of Quick Actions, but Quick Actions installed by third-party apps also appear here. You can even create your own Quick Actions using Automator.
Use Stacks on your desktop
macOS Mojave introduces Stacks, which lets you automatically organize your desktop into neat stacks of files, so it's easy to keep your desktop tidy and find exactly what you're looking for. Microsoft word 2014 mac. Learn more about Stacks.
The sidebar in Finder windows contains shortcuts to AirDrop, commonly used folders, iCloud Drive, devices such your hard drives, and more. Like items in the Dock, items in the sidebar open with just one click.
To change the items in your sidebar, choose Finder > Preferences from the Finder menu bar, then click Sidebar at the top of the preferences window. You can also drag files into or out of the sidebar. Learn more about customizing the sidebar.
Search for files
To search with Spotlight, click the magnifying glass in the menu bar, or press Command–Space bar. Spotlight is similar to Quick Search on iPhone or iPad. Learn more about Spotlight.
To search from a Finder window, use the search field in the corner of the window:
When you select a search result, its location appears at the bottom of the window. To get to this view from Spotlight, choose 'Show all in Finder' from the bottom of the Spotlight search results.
In both Spotlight and Finder, you can use advanced searches to narrow your search results.
Delete files
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To move a file to the Trash, drag the file to the Trash in the Dock. Or select one or more files and choose File > Move To Trash (Command-Delete).
To remove a file from the Trash, click the Trash to open it, then drag the file out of the Trash. Office 2106 mac. Or select the file and choose File > Put Back.
To delete the files in the Trash, choose File > Empty Trash. The storage space used by those files then becomes available for other files. In macOS Sierra, you can set up your Mac to empty the trash automatically.
There's nothing sexy about the Save dialog in Mac apps. It's not pretty, you can't tweet from it, and Apple hasn't changed anything about it in years. But every time you create a new document in a Mac app, you have to save it. Once in the Save dialog, you name your document, pick a location, and click Save. (Many apps also add their own options, such as picking a file format.)
Using the Save dialog isn't hard, but there are a bunch of ways to simplify the act of naming and positioning your document. Here are our favorites:
- Expand the Save dialog. By default, it appears in an abbreviated form that shows only fields for the file name and entering Finder tags, plus a destination pop-up menu that includes favorites from your Finder's sidebar and recently used folders. What if the folder in which you want to store the document isn't in the menu? Click the expansion triangle to the right of the Save As field to get the full-fledged Save dialog.
- Change the view. Once you're working in the expanded Save dialog, note that you can switch between Icon, List, and Column view using the view buttons at the top. Icon view isn't terribly useful, but it's much easier to see what's in the destination folder in List view, and much easier to navigate around your drive in Column view. You can even press Command-1 (icon), Command-2 (list), and Command-3 (column) to switch to specific views.
- Search for a folder. Not sure where the folder you want is located? Ask macOS to find it using the Search field, which limits itself to finding folders.
- Resize the dialog. If the Save dialog feels cramped, particularly in Column view, move your pointer over an edge or bottom corner until it turns into a double-headed arrow. Then click and drag to change the size of the dialog.
- Use the sidebar. The folders you've put in the Finder window sidebar appear in the sidebar here too, and a single click on any one teleports you to it instantly.
- Take advantage of keyboard shortcuts. Many people like to save new documents to the Desktop and file them later. If that's you, try pressing Command-D in the Save dialog to jump instantly to the Desktop. In fact, nearly all the keyboard shortcuts listed in the Finder's Go menu work in the Save dialog too.
- Make new folders. In its expanded form, the Save dialog gains a New Folder button you can click to make a new folder in the currently shown location. Or just press Command-Shift-N. Once you make the new folder, you can save your file into it.
- Pre-fill the file name. For some new files, you want the same name as a previous file, but with a version number or month appended. To pre-fill an existing file name in the Save As field, simply click the file in the listing. Then click in the Save As field to edit as necessary.
- Pre-fill the file name and destination. For our final trick, bring up the Save dialog, switch to the Finder, and drag a file from the Finder into anywhere in the Save dialog apart from the sidebar. Presto—the Save dialog pre-fills the file's name and jumps to its location; you can now edit the file name in the Save As field as desired. If you drag just a folder, only the location changes. (The item that you dragged doesn't move anywhere.)
So the next time you save a new document, think about all you can do in the Save dialog to spend less time fussing with file names and destinations.