10 Ways To Quickly Access Your Most Important Folders On a Mac

If you are working on a project and using one folder to open and save documents all the time, you can quickly access that folder a variety of ways. You can add it to the Dock, Finder sidebar and toolbar, create keyboard shortcuts, and much more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you ten ways you can quickly access and important folder on your Mac.
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So sometimes you have a folder that is the most important folder. It's got the files in it for the project you're working on now and you're constantly accessing it from the Finder, from different apps, in different situations. There are many ways to make this folder more easily accessible so you can quickly get to it in different situations.
Probably the most obvious one is to use the Dock. Let's use this Project A folder as an example. If I drag and drop that to the right side of the Dock, to the right of this last line there, I could put a folder there and it will appear there. I can click it to quickly see the items in it. If I Control click it I can change it from a Fan view to a Grid view to a List view. I like the List view most of all. I can click it there and see the files and the folders and files inside those folders as well. I could also go into Options here and change it to display as a folder rather than a bunch of different icons. You can always click on it and go to Open in Finder to open up that folder.
You can also easily set it to be in the Favorites in the Finder sidebar. To do that all you need to do is drag and drop it over into the Finder sidebar. Once you put it there you have now access to that folder by just clicking on it and it will jump to that location. But you can also drag and drop files directly into the Finder sidebar there. If the folder is in iCloud Drive you have the choice between putting it in Favorites or you could also put it under iCloud here. 
Now when you add something to the Finder's sidebar it also appears in another location. That's in Open and Save Dialogues. So, for instance, let's go to TextEdit here and I have a file I need to save. I'll go to File, Save and you could see I get kind of a mini Finder window here including the sidebar and there is that folder since I put it under Favorites. I can click on it and I jump easily to that location. The same thing for when I go to Open a new file I get the Finder sidebar there and click on the folder to go right to it.
Now you can also add folders to the Toolbar at the top. The best way to do that is to create a new Finder window so you have two Finder windows open at the same time. I doesn't matter what you're looking at in the second Finder window because you're just going to use that to go to View and then Customize Toolbar. Then with the Toolbar customization open you can then drag a folder from the other Finder window and stick it there in the Toolbar. It appears there as a folder. I'll see it just as an icon but I can select Icon and Text if I want to see the name as well. It will appear in all Finder windows. So I can close this second window here and I can see it there. I can click on it to quickly jump to that folder but I could also drag and drop into it.
Now I like to keep a nice clean desktop with no files on there. But you can put folders there. If you move a folder to the Desktop it actually moves into the desktop folder. Instead if you want to keep the folder where it is, in this case Project A is in the Documents folder, I could hold the Option and Command keys both down. Notice the cursor changes to this little curved arrow. If I drop it there what I'm doing is creating an Alias there. Notice Project A is still in the Documents folder but I have an alias to it now in the Desktop. I can double click on that to open up the folder and I can also drag and drop files to it. It's also handy when you're in an app to go to File, Save and then use the shortcut Command and D to jump to the Desktop and there you would see any aliases you have on the Desktop as well. So you can double click on the Project A folder to go into it.
Now you can also simply make this folder your default folder for New Finder Windows. So if I were to create a new Finder window you could see here it goes to my Home folder. But I can go to Finder, Preferences and under General I can change New Finder Window Show to anything I want. Right now it's set to the Home folder. I can set it to the Documents folder, you can set it to Recents, but you could also choose Other and then from Other I could go ahead and choose that Project A folder and now you could see New Finder Window show Project A. So anytime I go into the Finder to New Finder Window it jumps right to Project A.
Now it would be nice if you could customize the Go menu and add a folder or two to this list. But you can't. However there is something called Go To Folder here. Shift Command G is the shortcut. A lot of people like to use this when they like to type in the path to a folder. To get to the Project A folder I could type out the path to it which should start with tilde, which represent the Home folder, and slash documents slash Project A. Now I hit Go and it goes to that folder. Now that's not very quick to do at all! But the next time you use this, Shift Command G to get there, you could see it appears there as the last one I selected. I could just hit Return for Go. So anytime I want to jump to it I could do Shift Command G, Return and it goes there.
If you look here you'll see that there's actually a list of the five most recent  folders. To get to that list when you first open this up all you need to do is hit the down arrow and you could go to the one that you want and then hit Return to jump to it. So I could jump to the Documents folder like that. So even it's not the top choice there you could still use it if it's one of the five most recent. This also works in Save and Open Dialogues. So if I go to Save this TextEdit document I could do Shift Command G and it brings this up. Now I can down arrow to the one I want, hit Return, and I jump to that folder.
Now you can also use Automator to create a shortcut to go to this folder. An advantage to this is that you can set a keyboard shortcut for it. So let's go into Automator here. I'm going to create a new QuickAction. Then the first thing I'm going to do is Get Specified Finder Items right there. I'm going to Add this Finder location. So let's go right to the Project A folder here and I'll Add it. You can see it shows the specified item is Documents, Project A. Now I'm going to add Open Finder Items right there underneath it and set it to Default Applications and since it's a folder that would be the Finder.  I'm going to set the Input to No Input and have it work in any application.
Now when I run this it'll open up a New Finder Window with Project A. Perfect. So now I can Save this and let me just call it Go To Project A and save it out. Now I can Quit Automator and after a few seconds, if I look under Finder Services, I'll notice it there, Go To Project A. I can set a keyboard shortcut for this by going to System Preferences and then Keyboard Shortcuts, Add Shortcuts and I'll hit the Plus button and I'll do a shortcut for all applications, Go To Project A. Set a keyboard shortcut for it, let me do Shift Command Option G, and Add it. Now when I look under Services you can see Shift Command Option G is Go To Project A. So I can use that keyboard shortcut. The first time I do it it will ask for permission. But you could see it opens it up. So now anywhere I am, like say I'm here in TextEdit, I can use that keyboard shortcut and the first time I have to give permission for that app, and it opens up that folder. Next time I do it in that app the keyboard shortcut just quickly opens up that folder.
Now there's another way to add a keyboard shortcut to go to this folder. If you look under Go there's a Recent Folders submenu. Now, of course, this being an important folder it's certainly going to be in the Recent Folders list. Usually there are ten items in there although you can customize that. Well, it's not super convenient to go to Go, Recent Folders, and then find that folder. But since it's a menu item you can add a keyboard shortcut just as we did before. So let's go to System Preferences, and then Keyboard, Shortcuts, and then App Shortcuts. Let's add it for the exact name of that menu which is also the exact name of that folder like that. Then we'll set the keyboard shortcut to something like Control Option Command P and Add it. 
Now we can look in the Go menu under Recent Folders and see the shortcut there. So as long as this folder appears in this list that keyboard shortcut will be assigned to it. If it drops off this list for some reason because it's not one of the ten most recent, then you just need to use it again so it appears in the Recent's list and the keyboard shortcut will automatically come back. So I can just do Control Option Command P and you could see it opens up the Project A folder there without me having to create anything in Automator.
Here's one of the most interesting ways to quickly access that folder. Say you're always using the Print command and then saving as PDF's. A lot of people do this as a regular task constantly throughout the day, they create a PDF, Save As PDF. Then you would have to go and choose that folder if you're saving the documents into that folder. Well, if you look at the bottom of this menu here there's something called Edit Menu. Go to that and you see Printing Workflows. You could hit the Plus button and you could add as a Printing Workflow that location. So in this case I'm going to add the Project A folder. You could just go into it or select it like that. Hit Open and you could see Project A is added here. I'll hit OK. 
Now under this PDF menu if I look here I could see Project A. What happens if I select that? Well, it instantly saves a PDF of whatever I was trying to print. So now when I look in Project A I could see there is the PDF version of that untitled document. That works anywhere that you could print. For instance here I am in Mail. I could go File, Print or Command P, and then select the Project A folder there. Now if I look there I could see a PDF of that email message.
So the last one I want to show you involves the Spotlight Menu. This is through Command Space and of course you can search for anything. So I could search for Project A and I'll see it come up as a result. You could see it right there. Now this is where it's important to have a pretty unique name for the folder. Project A I had to type out the whole name project space A and you could see I have a lot of other folders called Project A in other locations. But if I were to go and name this something really unique, so now I can type Command Space and start typing the name of the folder and since it's so unique I don't even have to get that far. Three characters is all I need and it appears. I hit Return and now it opens up that folder. That works wherever I am. So I could be working here in TextEdit, for instance, and I can hit Command Space, type wom, hit Return, and it will jump to the folder in the Finder even though I was in TextEdit when I hit Command Space.
So each one of these different methods has its advantages and disadvantages. Hopefully one or more of them is going to be useful to you if you've got a single folder that you use all the time.

Comments: 3 Responses to “10 Ways To Quickly Access Your Most Important Folders On a Mac”

Sebastian

5 years ago

I made some important file folder aliases on my desktop. BUT, it won't allow me to drag things into them. Is this an iCloud problem or an OS problem.

Gary Rosenzweig

Sebastian: They should work. Try re-creating them.

Jasper

4 years ago

I had never thought of the print menu trick—Very useful for archiving important email!

All these tips work with Smart Folders too. You can specify heaps of different Smart Folder search criteria, e.g., “files in Project A” + “created in the past week“, if your workflow involves checking Project A’s paperwork once a week.

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10 Ways To Quickly Access Your Most Important Folders On a Mac

Comments: 3 Responses to “10 Ways To Quickly Access Your Most Important Folders On a Mac”

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