8 Ways To Get To the Finder From Anywhere

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can quickly switch to the Finder from anywhere. 

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Now this tutorial is about more than just switching to the Finder. Each of the different things I'm going to show you will add to your skills and help you get the most from your Mac. You can use them for a lot more than just getting to the Finder. So this basic idea is, here I am in an app, in this case Pages. I want to quickly switch to the Finder and have it open up a new Finder window if one is not already available. Now it would be great if there was a keyboard shortcut that would do that for you. Recently I did a video about using the Shortcuts App. You can use the Open App action to switch to an app and then assign that to a keyboard shortcut so you can press a single key and then bring up your favorite app. But if you look at the list of apps, Finder isn't available. So before we look at how to actually do that in Shortcuts let's look at how to do that in just the regular Mac User Interface. 

The most obvious way to get to the Finder is using App Switcher. Hold down the Command Key and tap Tab and you'll see all the apps you're using. Continue to tap Tab with the Command Key held down the entire time and then release the Command Key when you're over the Finder. Now you can see Finder is now the app that is currently running. If you don't have a Finder window already opened then you can open up a new one using the Keyboard Shortcut Command N for New Finder Window. So if I'm in Pages here, a quick Command Tab will go to Finder, release Command, Command N and I've got a New Finder Window. It's a bunch of steps but it will get you there. 

The primary way to launch apps on the Mac is using Launchpad. You can use it by a keyboard shortcut you've got assigned or the Launchpad icon in the Dock, and then you can launch any app or almost any app because if you search for Finder you find out that you can't launch the Finder from Launchpad. However, another popular way to launch apps is using Spotlight. Command Space brings up the Spotlight window and you can launch an app by typing its name and pressing Return. It turns out Finder can be launched this way. You can see here if I don't have a Finder window open and I use this it will actually open a new Finder window following the Finder, General setting here, New Finder Window Show, and in this case I've got it set to the Documents folder. 

That's the best way yet. But the way a lot of people probably are already using is to use the Dock. Finder is always the left most item in the Dock and you can click it at anytime and it will bring up the Finder and it will bring up a new Finder Window if one isn't already there. I'll close this one and you can see what happens if I click the Finder icon there. This is the fastest way as long as you're willing to use your Mac's mouse or trackpad. 

But you can actually use the keyboard to do this. The shortcut in today's Macs is the focus on the Dock is to use the fn or Globe Key and then A. Then this brings you to the  Dock. Now it is going to take you to your last position on the Dock so you maybe in the middle here. If you've never done this before then you should be at the Finder right away. But now you can just left arrow all the way to the Finder or you can use the F key and it's going to search for the first app that starts with the letter F which is always going to be the Finder since that is the one on the left. So pressing F and then you can simply press the spacebar and it will do that same thing as clicking on the Finder.

So you can do Globe A, F, space.

So if you already have a Finder window open, like this but it is covered by other windows, you can use Mission Control and get to it pretty quickly. So Control and Up Arrow will take you to Mission Control or you could setup your own keyboard shortcut for that. You'll see all of your windows including the Finder and you can just click on the Finder Window to bring it to the front. This is particularly useful if you have more than one Finder Window open and you just want to go right to the correct Finder Window. 

Now Stage Manager also works really well in this situation. This is, of course, new in macOS Ventura. I'm going to go into Control Center here and turn on Stage Manager. So now you can see I can easily flip through apps, like here if I'm running Pages I can see the Finder on the left. Even if Pages is taking up more space I can move my Pointer to the left side of the screen to reveal the apps that are there and then go easily to the Finder. 

Another handy trick is you can use an alternative Keyboard Shortcut to Command Space. Now Command Space brings up Spotlight. But Command Option Space will do a Finder search. In order to do a Finder Search, the Finder has to be the active app. So I do Command Option Space and notice it opens up a new Finder window. It takes you directly to a Search here. So it is going to open up a New window, go to Search. Now at this point I can use any of the sidebar items to go to where I want or any of these keyboard shortcuts in the Go Menu to go to where I want. So it is easy to navigate from there. If you've got current Finder windows open, like this one, and you use this you could see it opens up a new Tab there. It depends on your settings under General, Open Folders & Tabs Instead of New Windows. If I turn that Off and I try again you could see it opens up a New Window. The other window isn't actually brought to the front but at least I'm in the Finder now. So I can use Command and backtick as the window switcher if I want to get to something. 

So now this takes us to Shortcuts. Now Open App isn't going to work since Finder isn't one of the options. But we can use either Shell Scripts or Apple Script or Java Script to get the job done. So you can search for Shell and choose Run Shell Scripts from the list of actions here. Change the script from this default here to something like Open and then give it the name of a folder in your Home Directly. For instance, you can give it Documents. When you run this it will go to the Finder and open up a new window with Documents. If I try it again knowing that Finder had nothing open you can see it opens it up. If I do it again you could see I still have just this one Document window open. It's not going to open up another one. I go somewhere else and use this you can see now it will open up a second one because this window wasn't there. So this is pretty straight forward. You can use another folder name there. If it is something that has spaces in it remember to put quotes around it like that. Then I could go here to the Settings for this. I can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. So I'm going to run this. I'm going to use Option Shift F to do it. Now you should see it appear under the Apps Menu, Services, and then you should see the shortcut there. I should probably give it a name. Go to Finder, like that. Now here I am in Pages and I do Option Command F and it will bring up the Finder. 

An alternative to running a Shell Script is to run either Apple Script or JAVA Script. You all know I prefer JAVA Script. So I'm going to run JAVA Script for automation right here. Get rid of this sample here and I can do Application and then in parentheses in quotes Finder like that. Then dot then Activate. Let's try this out. I'm here in Pages. I do Option Command F and it will activate the Finder without opening up a new Finder window. So it is Shell Scripting that makes it easy to go to a Finder Window. But if you just want it to activate Finder there is a way to do it using JAVA script instead. So now I can do Command N to open up a new window if I want or just rely on the fact that I already have a Finder window or two open. So let's have this folder here and then Pages. I do Option Command F and you can see it goes to the Finder. Brings it all to the front and I see on my current Finder windows. 

So as you can see I've just given you a variety of techniques for quickly getting to the Finder. Each of those techniques could actually be used for something else. For instance the keyboard shortcut for getting to the Dock can help you launch another app whose actions and shortcuts can be used in conjunction with other things to create more complex shortcuts. Things like Mission Control and Stage Manager are useful for all sorts of multitasking needs. So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.