10 Ways To Quickly Get To Folders When Saving Files

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to quickly save documents to the location you want on your Mac. 

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So when you create a new document and then you go to Save it your presented with the Save Dialogue. Now starts the struggle to find the location where you want to save the document. You've got to navigate through all of your files and folders to find the perfect spot. But there are all sorts of techniques you can use in the Save Dialogue  to find the location you want very quickly. 

So as an example here I've created a new document in TextEdit and I'm going to use Command S or File, Save. Since I've never saved this document before it's going to prompt me as to where to save the document. Now the first thing I want to show you is that if you are presented with a very small Save Dialogue like this you're not seeing the full picture. You're seeing a very compact version of this which doesn't give you many options as to where to save the file. You can Name it and you can choose from a short list of locations. But you don't get the full save dialogue. To do that you're going to have to click here on this little down arrow or Disclosure Triangle as it is sometimes called and it will enlarge the Save Dialogue to be the full thing. This looks a lot like a Finder window because it's related to a Finder window. You're going to use a lot of the same techniques in here that you would if you were navigating around in the Finder. 

Now the idea here is that you know where you want to Save this file. Now it is a matter of getting there. So you can use all of these different tools here to go up levels, to go down into folders and subfolders and to find the location of where you want to save the file. But that could take awhile. So what are some techniques to speed that up.

The first one here is Favorites in the left sidebar. Now if for some reason you don't see the sidebar at all here you need to Unhide it. If you open up a Finder window, like this, you should see the sidebar here. But notice if you go to View, Hide Sidebar you can. Now you don't have a menu like this when you're in the Save Dialogue. But note the keyboard shortcut. Control Command S. That will work here as well. If I use Control Command S you see how it Hides or Shows the sidebar. So that is how you get it if you don't see it. Also notice you can Shrink or Expand Favorites using this little downward facing Disclosure Triangle right here so you want to make sure that it is revealed. Now Favorites can be customized. You would do that in the Finder. So let's say you've got a folder here called Files where you want to save a lot of files you're downloading currently. You can drag that to the Favorites section here. Now if I look here in the Save Dialogue notice it is there as well. So, put your most commonly used locations for saving files here and then when you get to the Save Dialogue all you need to do is click right there and you jump right to it. 

Now I'll show you how this keyboard shortcut works in the Save Dialogue even though there is no venue. Other keyboard shortcuts work as well. If you look at the GO menu in the Finder you'll see keyboard shortcuts for a lot of common locations. For instance Desktop is Shift Command D. The Documents folder is Shift Command O and your Home folder, root level, is Shift Command H. There are others as well. These will work in the Save Dialogue. So, if I want to go to my Home folder Shift Command H takes me there. Shift Command O takes me to Documents. Shift Command D takes me to my Desktop. Another keyboard shortcut that is really handy for quickly getting to locations is Command Up Arrow. So here notice I'm down in the Files folder. If I click here I can see Files is inside of Documents which is inside of iCloud Drive. Now if I want to go up I could click here and do that. But if I want to use the keyboard shortcut Command Up will get me there. So for navigating around in the Finder or in the Save Dialogue knowing how to use Command Up is key to being able to get around to everywhere. 

Now also notice here not only does the Save Dialogue look like a Finder window but in this case it looks like a Finder window in List mode. But you could switch to other modes as well. You click here notice how you can go to Icon View. You can go to Column View as well and then they work just like they do in the Finder. So if you're used to navigating around the Finder in Column View then switch to Columns here so that you can get around in the Save Dialogue in the same way. Also, the keyboard shortcuts Command 1. Command 2 and Command 3 work here to switch between modes too.

Now notice there's a Search box here. You can use the Search box to search not just for files but for locations. As a matter of fact in the Save Dialogue that is probably what you're using it for. So notice if I go into the Projects folder there's a folder called Project Alpha. Let's say I'm in the Documents level here and I want to go to that Project Alpha folder but I can't remember where it is. I don't need to remember. I can just search for it. So let me just search for Alpha here and then switch to Documents so I'm starting at the current location. Right there is Project Alpha. Now I can easily dive into it. This follows the rules that you set by going to Finder Preferences and then under Advanced you can see When Performing a search, Search this Mac Current Folder or use the Previous Search Scope. So let's set it to Current Folder. So now here when I'm in Documents and I need to find that Project Alpha folder I can search for Alpha and you can see by default it is searching inside the area I'm at and I can quickly find Project Alpha and get there. 

Another way to navigate to any location in the Finder is instead of using the controls in here use GO and Go To Folder or Shift Command G. Then you can type the path to any location. Use tilde there to be your user home folder and then you could do something like ~documents and Projects and it will autocomplete for you. So I could have types tilde slash and then doc for documents tab and then pr for projects tab and then pro and maybe use the arrow keys to go to say Project Beta here and you can see how I navigate to that. It will even remember Recents. So if I start from scratch here and just type beta notice how it remembers recents Project Beta there and I can go right to it. 

Well, Shift Command G works here in the Save Dialogue as well. So Shift Command G and now you could see it even remembers what I typed last. I can go to Beta. I can go to Alpha here and it won't find it because it wasn't something I used in this Go To folder dialogue. But I can do tilde slash documents projects and then you can see I can just navigate down here and find Project Alpha and go to it. Then the next time I want to go to it you could see by just typing Alpha will actually bring it up in Recents. 

Here's probably my favorite way to quickly get to a folder in the Save Dialogue. You simply open a Finder window or more likely you already have the Finder window open. So you've got it open somewhere. Now you go to Save something and you're like, well I want to save it right here. How do I get to that in here? Well, you don't need to. Just drag and drop. Drag this right over to the Save Dialogue and it jumps right to that location. This is great because it's so frustrating when you could see the location in the Finder that you want to Save the file to but yet the Save Dialogue isn't there and you're faced with having to navigate to it. You don't need to navigate. Just drag and drop. 

Now I also shouldn't overlook this right here which gives you access to some top level things plus Recent Places. Chances are if you are working on a project you've been saving files to one folder a lot. You'll find those here in Recent Places. The cool thing about that is it even appears if you're in the compact version of the Save Dialogue. You'll see those things right here at the bottom. Note also you'll see Favorites here because you don't have access to them in the Sidebar. So using Favorites also gives you access to those folders very easily even in the compact version of the Save Dialogue. 

Now let's look at something a little more complex. Let's say you want to add a bunch of folders to Favorites here because there is a whole variety of locations where you want to Save files. But you don't want to clutter up Favorites. So what you can do here is create a New Folder. Let's go and create a new folder here in the Documents folder and call it Save Locations. Then let's open this up here in a new window. So now I've got this folder here that's empty, Save Locations, and let's find some places like here's Projects . I'm going to drag Projects but I'm going to be careful to hold Command and Option. That creates an alias to the Projects folder. The Project's folder stays where it is but I have an alias to it here. Let's do the same thing with Current. Let's go into Projects here and do it, say, for Project Beta and let's go, maybe, into this Stuff folder here and there's a folder A. I put a bunch of things here. Let's do folder B too. You can have ten or twenty things here in Save Locations. So now let's go back to the Documents level here and let's add Save Locations to Favorites. So now when I go to Save a document I can click on Save Locations and I can see the aliases to all those different places. I can just double click to pick one and now I'm right there. So you can add any alias to any folder that you want here to Save Locations as a convenient way to have many locations stored under one Favorite in the Finder sidebar. 

You can even add to this list while saving. So I'll go into Finder here and say I really want this App Dev folder to be there as well. I can drag and drop it holding Option and Command into the Save Dialogue. It actually adds it like I'm dragging it to a Finder window. You can go in and Control click and remove it here in the Save Dialogue as well. 

Now let's look at another way to do that. What about using Tags instead? So let's go select a folder like this one and I'm going to go to File and Tags and I'm going to add a tag called Save Folder. This is the folder I'm going to use to save things. So I've added it here for business. Let's go into Projects maybe down to all three of these and I'm going to do File, Tags and then do the same thing there. Let's do it for this Stuff folder as well. Now you can see it here in the Tags, Save Folder. Let's move it to the top of the list right there. Now when I go to Save something I can actually see Tags here. Go to Save Folder and I can see all these things here. These Tags here are set to be grouped so let's turn off Grouping here. But you can see all the folders that I tagged with Save Folder very easily accessible there. You could also, in the Finder here, do a Search for Tag and then Save Folder like that. Select it there, do Save, and it will save it as a Saved Search or Smart Folder and just make sure Add to Sidebar is checked. Let's name it something better like Save Folders like that and now it's under Favorites right here. So that works just like this folder of aliases here but it's just pulling these tags. So I can go back into the Finder anytime I want, select another folder, and then add that tag to it. Now you can see it appears here. So instead of having to drag an alias into that Save location folder I created I just add a Tag to the folder. 

Now this comes in handy for browsers as well. So when you go to save a download in a browser you can click on it and it will download to your default download's folder. But if you Control click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, then you can choose to download link file As and you get a Save Dialogue. All the stuff I showed you before, all of the tricks, the things in Favorites, the keyboard shortcuts, they all work here as well. In addition, you can make this the Default instead of having to do a special click on this by going into Safari Preferences under General see where it says File Download Location. Switch to Ask For Each Download. So now anytime you click on something that is downloadable it is going to present you with a Save Dialogue instead of automatically going to the Downloads Folder. So then you can avoid using the Downloads Folder entirely as every time you save a download it's going to prompt you. Now you can use these techniques for quickly finding the locations you need to save your files.

So there's a whole bunch of different techniques for making it easier to use Save Dialogues on your Mac. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.