15 Tips For Using List View In the Mac Finder

The Finder's List view gives you a sortable list of files and folders with columns of data such as date, size and kind. You can sort by the columns, add new ones, and arrange them. You can also navigate down into subfolders using the cursor or keyboard. Learn some little-known tricks for using List View.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: 
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
So List View in the Finder is probably the
view with the most functionality.
You can get to List View by either clicking
here on this button which will change to List
View or to go into View, As List.
List View gives you not only the names of
the files but also other information about
each one.
For instance here you can see the Date Modified,
the Size, and the Kind of each file.
List View also allows you to easily sort the
files in a variety of different ways.
Basically you can use the Column Title to
sort them.
In this case they are already sorted by Name
in ascending order.
You can see here this little mark, an arrow
pointing up, tells you it's using this column
name and doing it in ascending order.
If I wanted to sort by Date Modified all I
need to do is click the Date Modified Title
and you can see the arrow moves there.
Now they're sorted by Date Modified in ascending
order.
You can always reverse the order of the sort
by clicking again and you can see that arrow
now is pointing down.
Now we have the most recent files first.
The same thing here with Name.
We click that once and we're in alphabetical
order starting with A. But if we click again
you can see now it reverses the order and
goes from Z to A.
Now you can Resize any of these columns by
clicking and dragging the line between the
titles.
You can see that the cursor changes there.
I can click and drag to the left or the right
to resize the column.
Notice if you do that with columns that have
dates in them the format of the date will
change.
So as I shrink this you can see it goes to
a smaller format and when I enlarge it, it
goes to a larger format spelling out the whole
month.
You could also double click on any of these
little lines to right size the column.
In other words it will match the longest piece
of text there.
So it was able to shrink this Name column
because it there was excess space.
If I was to shrink this column too much you
can see the names are shortened.
I could move the cursor over one and I could
see the file name here.
But I could just double click and it will
right size it again larger to fit the longest
name there.
Now you can add many more columns than just
these four.
There are two ways to do that.
A really simple way is to Control click on
any of these titles here.
Just hold the Control key down and click and
you get this little list here.
You can see the checkmarks next to the columns
that are there.
By default Name is always there as a column
but I have these three additional columns
here.
I could add a new one, like let's add Date
Created, and now you could see I have that
new column there.
I could Control click and remove Date Created
just as easily.
You could also go to View, and Show View Options
or just Command J. Here you'll see a list
of all of the different columns and you could
check or uncheck each one.
Now you could also rearrange the columns.
If you want Size to be to the left of Date
Modified just click and drag and you can move
that column around.
You can't put anything to the left of the
Name column but you could move the rest of
the columns to be in any order you want.
Now when we look to the View options there
with Command J we saw that there's also two
sizing options.
You can change the size of the text to make
it larger or even go smaller.
You also have two choices in Icon size.
So you can make the icon a little bit bigger
to make it easier to see some of the picture
icons there.
Now if you're sorting by size one of the things
that you may notice is that folders don't
have size.
They just have two dashes.
But if you want to include Folders in that
sort you need to enable Calculate All Sizes
here in the View options.
When you do that the Folder sizes will be
shown as well.
Now it's pretty quick here if there's not
too much in these folders.
But if the folders have lots of files in them
it may take several seconds or even minutes
for all of the folder sizes to be filled in
and complete.
Now you may also notice here under dates you
get dates like yesterday.
If you would rather not see those you can
turn off Use relative dates.
It actually switches showing dates for everything
rather than using labels like Today or Yesterday.
Now if you want to dig down into Folders using
List View there's really interesting functionality.
You have these little reveal triangles here
to the left of any folder.
If you click on one it expands to show you
the files in there.
You can view the files in this folder as well
as all of the rest of the files at this level.
You can expand as many of these folders as
you want.
Notice it does it with an animation.
You can see the expansion.
That could actually take a little while if
you have a longer folder.
You can shorten that time by holding the Option
key.
Watch what happens when I do it normally.
Watch what happens when I do it holding the
Option key down.
Now you can also open folders using the keyboard.
So if I click and select this folder I can
use the Up and Down arrows to navigate up
and down on the list.
But if I use the Right arrow it expands the
folder.
The Left arrow will shrink it back into the
folder.
The cool thing about that is you can do it
with multiple folders.
So I can use the Command key here and click
this folder.
Now I have two folders selected.
If I use the right arrow key both of those
folders open up.
The left arrow both of those folders will
close.
Now if I do Command A it selects everything.
If I do right arrow it will expand all of
those folders.
You can see I still have just the folders
selected that are at the top level.
Now notice there are some other folders here.
If I do Command A again now it selects everything
that is visible.
The right arrow will expand any folders that
are there.
I can use the left arrow and everything shrinks
back.
So you can navigate around here with the keyboard.
So I can move up and down.
I can move right to go into a folder.
I can move down through there.
I can use Copy and Paste or Copy and Move
to move a file.
So, for instance, I can go in here and say
I want to move this file.
I'll do Command C to Copy.
Nothing happens right away.
I can go up here Left arrow to close that.
Go down to this folder.
Right arrow to open this.
If I do Command V it will paste a copy in
here.
You can see here Command V, paste item.
But if I hold the Option key down you can
see Option Command V is move item here.
So Option Command V and that item moves into
that folder.
So you can navigate around and move files
using just the keyboard.
You can also use Command Z to Undo a move
like that.
Now you can also do that using the Mouse in
spring loaded folders.
So if I open this folder up here and I grab
a file like this and I move it over images
and I wait Images will open up.
I'll go down into it and drop that file into
there.
You can see now it has taken me down into
that folder.
If you want to get up out of it you can use
Command Up arrow and you go back up a level.
You can use Grouping here instead of Sorting
just everything alphabetically together.
So you can go to View, and Use Groups.
When I do that you can see View, Sort By changes
to View, Group By.
I can change to group.
So I have Kind here but I can also do Date
Last Opened.
Now you can see it puts them all in groups.
You can also Click here and change the grouping
as well.
Another type of grouping is to have Folders
on top all the time.
So in order to do that you have to set the
grouping to None and you have to be sorted
by Name.
Then you can go into Finder Preferences and
Keep Folders On Top in Windows when sorting
by Name.
All of the Folders will be at the top before
all of the files.
Now in Column View you usually see a preview
of the file that's selected on the right.
You can do that in List View as well although
it's not on by default.
If you go to View and you use Show Preview
you get that same Preview area here to the
right.
So you still have all the functionality here
of List View but with the Preview area that
includes extra information about the file
and also Finder Quick Actions.
I could see an image.
I could see PDF.
I could see text files.
All sorts of things.
Now here's a really bizarre trick.
You can Control click here I showed you to
select different columns that could appear.
But there are special hidden columns you could
bring up.
In order to do that you have to have the folder
named a certain thing.
For this folder of images let's change the
name, I'm just going to Return and change
the name.
Change it to Pictures.
That's a special name.
Now when I go into this folder here I see
it in List View and if I Control click here
in addition to all the standard columns I
could add Dimensions and Resolution.
You could see those appear here on the right.
Let's shrink down the Name column so we can
see them all together.
You could see the Dimensions and Resolutions
of these images.
You could even sort by them.
So that only works if the folder happens to
have the exact name Pictures.
So if you're creating a project folder and
you're putting a bunch of images into a folder
inside of that you might want to think about
naming it Pictures just to use this functionality.
Or name it whatever you want, like I had it
as Images, but simply change the name to Pictures
in order to see these extra columns.
Then when you go back into it, even though
you've changed the name, you'll see Dimensions
and Resolution stay there as columns.
Now if you rename a folder Movies that's also
a special name.
When I go into that if I Control click I see,
in addition to the normal columns, Dimensions,
Duration, Title, and Codex.
So I can add these columns to folders that
are named Movies.
Now one last thing I want to show you is that
when you go to Open and Save dialogue boxes
inside of apps, in this case I'm in Pages
here, and I'm going to open a new file.
By default you're going to see Column View.
But you can click here and go to List View
and then you've got List View here including
the ability to Sort and Control click and
add and remove columns inside of Open and
Save dialogues in apps on your Mac.
So even if you prefer to use Column View or
Icon View as your main view it's worthwhile
to learn how to use List View because it has
a lot of utility being able to see things
like dates, sizes, kinds of files, all here
in the list and then easily sort by anyone
of those that helps you organize and work
with your folders and files.
Also whenever you do a Find, so I'm going
to search here for something, you're going
to get a List View as the result here.
So knowing how to control the columns and
sorting is important.

Comments: 8 Responses to “15 Tips For Using List View In the Mac Finder”

Don Palmer

4 years ago

Just to let you know how very important your tips for both List and Column are to a non-Pro like me.

ntb

In the drop down options for viewing files (in both List View and Column View) you explain the difference between 'by Name' and 'None' please? It seems to me to me that 'None' is also an alphabetical listing of the contents. Have I missed something here?

Gary Rosenzweig

ntb: You can sort by Name, but there is no option to sort by None. That is a grouping option. You can group by None (grouping off) and you can group by Name.

Steve Jameson

Fine work. Thanks for taking the time to make and post the tutorial.

Mike BW

Gary,
Do you know of any way to change the sort order via keyboard? For example, just like we can click on a column header in List View to go from ascending to descending, could the same be achieved by keyboard only?

Mike: Choose View, Sort By, then look at the options. To the right of them are keyboard shortcuts for each one.

Thanks Gary,
What I am actually trying to do is find a key stroke to change the direction of the sort in any of those selected columns. Currently the only way I know of to do that is to actually click on the name of the column, which for the Name sort, would change it from Alphabetical A-Z to reverse Z-A.

Mike: Oh, I see. No, I don't see any way to do that with just the keyboard.

Comments Closed.

15 Tips For Using List View In the Mac Finder

Comments: 8 Responses to “15 Tips For Using List View In the Mac Finder”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information