MacMost Now 448: Default Folder X

The handy utility Default Folder X adds extra functionality to your save and open dialogs. You can quickly navigate to folders already open on your desktop, jump to recent and favorite folders, set a default folder for each application, and make changes to files you see in the dialog boxes.

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode, let's look at the Mac utility "Default Folder X". So the idea behind default folder x is to add more functionality into your saved and opened dialogues. let's take a look, so here's a document I quickly created in text edit. i'm gonna save it for the first time. I get the standard save dialogue but surrounding that I get the default folder x functionality. so for instance if I wanted to quickly jump to a drive attached to this Mac I could do so by clicking here. I can also go to a list of favorites that i've set up, a list of recent folders that i've accessed, and a list of folders that are open right now in the finder. so one of the coolest things you can do in default folder x is you can quickly go to a location that you can just see it right there on the finder. for instance here i'm saving a document and it has opened the dialogue in the user folder. and right over here to the right I can see the test documents folder, and I want to save the file there. now in order to do that normally you would have to navigate over to where that test documents folder is from inside this open window. but with default folder x I simply move my cursor over there and click it. and now the open dialogue, the save dialogue here, jumps right to that folder and I can hit save. now default folder x also adds a sys preference pane. when you go there there's a bunch of different things you can do. one is that you can set default folders for various applications. so for instance for textedit I can set it to a specific location I want new textedit documents to save to. this is very useful if you use programs like photoshop or video editing software and you always want to save your projects to the same location, and you're sick of having to find the location when you start a new document. you can also add to a list of favorite places that you want to save things, and that appears to the right in save dialogues. in addition there's a lot of different ways that you can customize how default folder x works. so default folder x also works in open dialogues. and the advantage here is not only can you access all the default folders and favorites and recent folders and things, but you also get information here at the bottom about what you're looking at. so for instance if I take a look here I can look at a preview, I can quick look, I can get information about it, and even better than that I can change things about it like the colors and settings, even permissions for the file, and spotlight comments, and even add tags for the file, all in the open dialogue. I can even select and then rename a file right inside the open dialogue. I don't actually have to leave it and go into the finder to rename a file if I see something I need to change. so default folder x is what I would call a "power user utility". there's nothing that you can do in default folder x that you can't do in regular open and save dialogues and the finder. it'll just take more time and more clicks. but if you're a power user, and somebody that's constantly opening and closing files, working on tons of documents, doing a lot of work, and trying to find out ways to do more work on your Mac than ever before then default folder x might be worth trying out. there's a free 30-day trial at the developer's website, so it's easy to see if default folder x is something that can help you. hope you liked this look at default folder x, till next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 448: Default Folder X

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