7 Ways To Customize the Finder Toolbar on Your Mac

Here are some useful ways to customize your Finder toolbar with new buttons. You can add Finder commands, folders, files, and even Shortcuts that do various things.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some useful ways to customize the Finder Tool Bar. 
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So most Mac windows have a Tool Bar that's across the top of the window. In the Finder the Tool Bar is right here. It's got all of these different buttons and a Search Field. In most apps when you see a Tool Bar like this you can customize it. One way to get to the customization options is to go to the View Menu and look for Customize Tool Bar. But you can do the same thing, usually, with Control Click, right click or two-finger click on a trackpad in a blank area of the Tool Bar, like this. Then choose Customize Too Bar. This then brings up a Control Panel here with new buttons that you can add to the Tool Bar and a default set at the bottom that you can drag to it to Reset it. 
Let's add a New Folder Button. I'm going to drag this here  just to the left of the Finder Views Button set here. So now when I click Done, if I want to create a new folder, I can of course still go to File, and then New Folder. But I can also use this button here and it will create a New Folder like that. When in this editing mode you can also drag items out and you can rearrange items. So I can take the four button View Set here and drag it around and reposition it and I can add other things. So something useful to add might be a Quick Look Button if you prefer to click somewhere rather than use a keyboard shortcut. This button here will add a Preview Button so it will bring up or remove the Preview section on the right side. There is also this Path Button here. So some useful things. The Path button will show you the path to the current location. You can get the same thing by holding down Command and clicking the title here. The Preview Button brings up previews here on the right and Quick Look will bring up the Quick Look window or dismiss it. 
Then if you ever want to go back to the default set just drag this large item here back up, Add it, and it resets the entire thing. 
Now you can also add other items here when you're in this editing mode. The trick is to have two Finder windows open. So the first Finder window you're going to go into the Editing Mode for the Tool Bar. Then you're going to open up a second Finder window. The second Finder window is in normal mode. So you can access files and folders in it. One thing you can add to the Tool Bar here is a Folder. So let's take this folder called Current. Go to drag it from this one Finder window here into the Tool Bar of the Finder window that is in Edit Mode, like this. It adds the Folder Icon there. Now this will give you two things. First, it will give you a quick way to jump to that folder. So, of course, I can just jump into the current folder but maybe I'm not even here. Maybe I'm in a completely separate folder like this. I can click here and it will take me right to that current folder. 
Another thing I can do, is I can use this as a Drop Zone. So I can grab a file, like say this one, and drop it in here. Then if I go to that folder by clicking on it like that I can see that that file has been moved there. So note that this really gives you no advantage over just having this folder in the left sidebar.  So if I were to go up here and in Current and go to the left sidebar it works much the same way. I can click it to jump to that location and I can drag and drop files into it. So what you may want to do is reserve an icon up here for an extremely important single folder that you access all the time and use the sidebar here when you have multiple folders that you want to have easy access to. 
Now in a similar way we can add a File instead of a Folder.  So let's Customize Tool Bar  in this window here. I'm going to drag this folder out here to clear the space. I'm going to go and look at a File, like let's say this one, and I'm going to drag that into the other window here. You can see the file appears there with its icon. So now I can use this to open up this file really quickly. This could be useful if you've got one file that is so important that you're  using it all the time, always opening and closing this file. You can stick it there in the Finder Toolbar to have easy access to it. Of course if you're going to do that for multiple files it is going to get pretty crowded. 
Now instead of adding a File you can also add an app here. So in the second Finder window I'm going to go to the Applications folder. So now I have a list of all my applications here. I'm going to add an app. Let's add Pixelmator Pro, a third party app here for editing images. Now I've gotten that in the ToolBar. What I can do with this is I can click it once and it will launch the app. But I could also, as you might expect, use it as a drop zone. So I can take this file here and drop it onto it and it will open up Pixelmator Pro and that image will open up inside it. So if you find yourself often working all day in a specific app that is the main app that you use, you may want to add an Icon to it in the Finder Tool Bar like that.   
 
Now another thing you can add is a Shortcut. Of course with Shortcuts we can do a lot of different things. So, I'm going to launch the Shortcut App here. I've created a few shortcuts as examples. This one is a fairly simple one. It's going to use the Find Windows action and it's going to find all the windows limited to one. So in other words the top-most window. I've added a Filter here at the top for width is greater than 50 because when you're screen recording the little icon that appear here at the top, they are little windows as well but they are small. So as long as I say width is greater than 50 and I limit to one it is going to be the front-most window. Then I'm just going to use the Move Windows Action to move windows to center. There are a bunch of different things that you can actually use like here's the Move Windows one. But you can also use Resize Window to resize it to a specific width and height or put it in a corner or on half a screen.
So I've got this Center Current Window shortcut. I've set the icon up to be this positioning icon here so that kind of conveys its function and I've set it to a light gray so I think it will look good in the Tool Bar this way. What I'm going to do to add to the Tool Bar is I'm going to go to File and then I'm going to Share to Dock. That's going to create a little mini app version of this shortcut. If I look in the Dock I'll see Center Current Window. I can actually just drag that out of the Dock. I'm not going to use this in the Dock. Instead I'm going to go to my Home Folder and in my Home Folder there is an Applications Folder. When I add Center Current Window to the Dock it actually added it here. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to open up a Second Finder Window and I'm going to add this window into the customized tool bar mode, move it out of the way, and I'm going to drag from that first Finder window this Shortcut here and now I've added that there. When I click it it's going to take the front most window and center it. Well guess what? When you click it in the Finder window the Finder window you're working in is the front most window.
Now let's give it a try. I'm going to move this window so it is not centered and if I click it, it will center this window. 
Here's another one I've created. It's call Send Files. So in this one it's going to get selected files in the Finder. So it is going to rely on the fact that I've selected files first. Then it is going to use the Mail action Send and I'm going to put what to send as the file. I'm going to leave recipient and subject as blanks, but you could fill those in if you're always sending to the same person you can just add them as a recipient here and you can add a subject that makes sense. Under Show More I just have Show Compose Sheet turned on so that it will basically open up Mail with a composition window with those files already attached. I've set the icon here to be a little paperclip in that light gray as well. Now I'm going to go to File, and then Add to Dock. I'm going to remove it from the Dock here but when I go to my Home Folder and Applications I will find Send Files right there. 
Let's open up a second Finder window. Then Edit the Tool Bar. Get rid of the other one we added before. Instead add Send Files here. So to test it out I'm going to select these two images here and I'm going to click this button. Going to open up the Mail App and you can see it's going to create a new message here and you can see it's got those two images attached. So a quick way to be able to select some files and send them. 
Here's on last shortcut that I find kind of interesting. This will add a file to Reminders. So a productivity app is, of course, when you need to accomplish a task but you can't do it right now or you don't want to interrupt what you're doing you just create a reminder. Now you can drag a file to the Reminders app. But let's say you don't even have that open. It would be nice to be able to select a file in the Finder and with one click add that file as a Reminder. So in this it is going to get Selected Files from the Finder, which we saw before. You can start a lot of useful Finder shortcuts with this one action here. Then I'm going to repeat because there might be multiple files. We want to create a reminder for each one. It's going to get the name. I'm using the Get File Details action there. So I'm going to get the name. I'm also going to use the same Get File Details but this time get the file path and of the repeat item. So each time through the loop it is going to get it. I'm going to use URL in code for the file path. That will handle spaces correctly. Then I'm going to use the Add Reminder Action to add the name of the repeat item. The name of the file to reminders with no alert. Under Show More note that in the Notes section I've typed file colon slash slash. Then I Control clicked here, Insert Variable and Added the URL in coded text. So in other words the path to that item. Note I've set the Reminders List to be Reminders. You can switch this to any list that you want that makes sense. That's the whole repeat Loop. So it is going to repeat and add any selected files as individual reminders with a link in the note. I've added this little icon here that looks like reminders list and set it to gray. I'm going to go to File and Add to Dock. I'll get rid of it out of the Dock like that and then I'll go in the Application's Folder here in my Home Folder. I will see the Add File to Reminders. So let's customize the Tool Bar. Remove this one and instead I'm going to add Add File to Reminders. Now, I can select some files. Let's go under current right here and let's select this file and this file, two of them. I'm going to click on this and it will run the shortcut. Now let's go to the Reminders App. Here I am in the Reminders List and there are the two new reminders added. You can see it's go the File name for each one and I can click on the little link here and it will take me right to that file. 
So I want to give you one last tip here. You can change how this looks by Control clicking, right clicking, or two-finger clicking on the toolbar like before. Instead of going to Customize toolbar you can use one of these three options here. It is the same if you choose Customize toolbar and you look down at the bottom. You can change from Icon Only to Text Only. This often takes up less space. You can also have Icon and Text. Have both. So we know some people sometimes don't like just having icons there and can't remember what these all mean. So for some using text instead of icons may be better. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 14 Responses to “7 Ways To Customize the Finder Toolbar on Your Mac”

John Carter

12 months ago

Very useful! What you have shown is worth including in my lessons for my Mac club.

GazzaDownUnder

Two things I always do with my set up (and others find it very helpful) is to turn on icon&text …. Plus customise the Toolbar to include the TrashCan. (If one selects a file/s in the finder window one can then click the Delete icon in the Finder tool bar).
My latest tip is to move (via Customise) the Find icon towards the centre of the Toolbar window instead out to the far right.
I’ve also done this in the Mail app Toolbar, move the Find icon to the left side. (and icon&Text).

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Ken Nellis

Great tip about putting Shortcuts in the Finder Toolbar! That Shortcut you showed previously to create a new text file works great there. Thanx!

Michael

Already using some of these tips---thanks!

Steven Louis

When you add "new folder" to the Finder toolbar the icon is grayed out and does not create a new folder in finder?

Gary Rosenzweig

Steven: That means you are not at a location where you can create a new folder. What location is your Finder window currently showing?

Derek

Thanks this is great. What if the file is in my Download folder on my Mac & can't be accessed by my iPhone as I don't use iCloud file. Can I actually attach the file itself and if so what do I change to the Shortcut to do this?

Oops sorry I should have clarified I was asking in relation to the "Add file to reminders" shortcut?

Derek: No, you can't attach a file to a Reminder. But you can certainly put it in iCloud Drive so you can access it on your iPhone as well as your Mac.

Henning

9 months ago

Hi Gary, i placed some Apps in the toolbar. All worked fine. Since the latest MacOS update, "dropzone" feature no longer works here. Can you please check on your end?
Regards
Henning

Henning: Do you mean can I still drag apps to the Finder toolbar? Yes, it still works as before. And if the app handles that type of file I can drop it on that toolbar item to open the file.

After restarting the finder, two of the three apps handle their files again, but the third one doesn't - no idea why...

But thanks a lot!
By the way: in all that trying i found out, that i don't need a second finderwindow to add items to the toolbar.
If i just hold down the command key i can drag and drop items there.

7 Ways To Customize the Finder Toolbar on Your Mac

Comments: 14 Responses to “7 Ways To Customize the Finder Toolbar on Your Mac”

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