Navigating Around In the Finder On a Mac

There are many ways to navigate from folder to folder in the Finder on your Mac. You can go down into folders, up to the enclosing folder, and sideways to adjacent folders. There are many ways to do each, depending on which Finder View you are currently using.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to navigate to different folders in the Finder.
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So when you're in a Finder window there are many ways to navigate around into folders that are in the current folder you are reviewing, up to the Enclosing folder, or sideways to other folders in the same folder you are at now. So, for instance, here I'm using Icon View. I'm looking at a folder called Example Files. I've got several files in there and a couple of folders. So if I want to navigate down into one of these folders I could simply double click it. You could see how now I've moved down a level into the Some Files folder but I could not longer see what's in the original file, Example Files. In order to get there I would need to go back up. There are several different ways to go back up. One is you can hold the Command key down and click on the name at the top, in the Title Bar, and you could see the full hierarchy of all the folders. Here I am in Some Files, which is inside the folder Example Files, which is inside the Documents Folder which is inside iCloud Drive.
I can move up to anyone of these by simply selecting it and now you can see I've moved up to that level. Another way to do it is to go to View and then turn on the Path Bar. When you do that at the bottom you'll see the path to where you are. So if I go back down into Some Files here you could see iCloud Drive, Documents, Example Files, Some Files. If I want to go backup to Example Files I could simply double click on Example Files there and I'll go to that level. There's also a way to simply go up one level. If you look in the Go Menu it's called the Enclosing Folder. The keyboard shortcut is simply Common up arrow. So let's use the keyboard shortcut and you could see I can go from Example Files up to Documents. 
Now there's really no way to go sideways to an adjacent folder. For instance I have More Files and Some Files. If I go to Some Files the only way for me to get to the other folder is to go up and then go down into the this one. However, if we switched to another view, let's say Column View, then things are a little different. So here you could see in the left column at this level I'm in my Documents folder. Then at this level I have the files that are inside Example Files. If I wanted to look to see what's inside the Some Files folder I could click that and you could see I get another column showing me what's in there. Now in Column View it's pretty easy to see how you can move up because you can simply click on an item here to the left. To move down all you need to do is click the folders. So I can for instance click Project Alpha here to go into that folder. You could see how easy it is to move into adjacent folders. Go sideways. So if I wanted to go from Project Alpha to Example Files it's easy to do that in Column View. 
Note that if I wanted to move up beyond the level that I started at, the left most column, I have to resort to the same techniques that I would use in iCloud View. I can Command click here and move up. I can use the Path Bar at the bottom or I can use Go, Enclosing Folder or Command Up to go up a level. But wherever I start I can easily go down and then back up just by clicking on the folders that I see. You can use the arrow keys for this as well. So notice Example Files is selected. I can up and down and when I am over a folder like that Example Files I can go to the right and it moves the selection into that column. Then I can go down into another folder to get there. I can move to the left with the left arrow to go up a level. 
Now another option is List View. When you go into List View then you only see one level at a time or at least that's what it looks like. Here I'm looking at my Example Files folder. I see all the files in there. Kind of similar to Icon View. Except next to each folder I've got this little arrow here that I can click and it will reveal the items inside of that folder. So to go down I can simply reveal what's there and I still see everything at the current level, Example Files, in addition to everything one level down inside of Some Files. To go Up I can use the same three methods either here or here or Command Up Arrow and I can see I'm at the Documents folder level. Let's switch that to List View as well. Notice that I can not only go down one level like that but actually two. So I see now everything in my Documents folder, everything in Example Files, and everything in Some Files all in one list. Not only that, but I can see files that are in adjacent folders at the same time. So under My Pictures I can reveal that and I can see in this list everything in My Pictures at the same time I'm seeing everything in Example Files and Some Files. You can use the arrow keys to manipulate this as well. I can go up and down with the up and down arrow keys. If I'm over a folder that's open I can use the left arrow to close it and the right arrow to open it. 
So if you have to navigate around a lot in the Finder then using Column View or List View are probably your best options. Each have their strengths. Column View is a very clean look at your files. You can focus in on a single folder and everything above it and it's easy to move to adjacent folders to see what's in those. So if you need to, say, move a file from one folder to another I could look at Example Files here, grab a file from that and drag it into an adjacent folder very easily. Something I couldn't really do in Icon View. List View is a much more cluttered view of everything. You're going to see all the information in these columns. But it does allow you to see the contents of adjacent folders at the same time and even several levels deep inside of folders all while looking at the contents of the folders above that. So it's the most comprehensive view although if you have a lot of folders open it can get really confusing as to what it is you're looking at. 
Now there's one more way to actually navigate up that I haven't shown you. That's to customize the Tool Bar here. I'm going to go to View, Customize Tool Bar. One of the options here is to add a Path button. So let's go ahead and add that in here. Now the Path Button gives you a list of all the folders above this one. It's the same list you get when Command click on the Title. So it's kind of unnecessary to add it but it is nice to be able to just click and not have to hold a modifier key to see all the folders above it and jump to one.
So, so far I've showed you how to go down into a subfolder, how to up to the Enclosing Folder, or how to go sideways to an adjacent folder at the same level. But there are other ways to navigate around in the Finder. For instance, you can use the Go Menu here and use Go To Folder or Shift Command G and then type a path to someplace. Now you can use the tilde character, which is shift and the key to the left of the one on your US keyboards, and then slash and then start typing the path. Like ~/documents and use that for Go and you jump right there. Now another way to navigate is to use the back button here which works just like the back button in the browser. It won't necessarily go up a level but it will take you to the previous folder. So if I go into Example Files and then Some Files I could go back various different levels. But if I use a way to jump to another location, like Some Files here, I could use back to go right to Documents because that's what I was previously looking at.
Another way to navigate is to use Go and then there's Recent Folders. It will show you recent locations you've been to and you could jump to one of those although that will usually open up a new Finder window. Now if there's a location that you commonly go to, like maybe the Some Files folder, you could simply drag and add it to the left sidebar under Favorites here. So I'm going to add it here to the bottom. Now you can click that anytime you want to go to that location. You can also drag it into the Tool Bar here by holding the Command key down and dragging it and placing it in here. But you have very limited space in the Tool Bar. A lot more space here in Favorites as this will scroll. But save that technique and only use it for a select few folders that you access all the time. 
Note that this works in File Open and File Save dialogues as well. So here I am in Pages and going to open a new file. You could see it looks like a little Finder window here. I can switch between the different views, like List View and Column, and I could use the same techniques to look inside different folders and navigate around really easily inside of this little window for opening files just like a Finder window. It even shows you the Favorites. So if you've added something here like I've added Some Files then I could jump right to that. I can even use Shift Command G to go to a location. Command up arrow works as well to go up and you could use this menu right here to jump up several different levels. 
So hopefully you've learned a few new tricks here even if before you knew the basics of how to navigate around in the Finder.

Comments: 5 Responses to “Navigating Around In the Finder On a Mac”

Kathy

3 years ago

Hi Gary, I have created a dock item for "Recent Documents" from the finder as in a previous video that I found most helpful. I have noticed though that this dock item does not update real time as I access other files, and after restart of the iMac that the option to view this dock item as fan, grid or list is no longer clickable as it's greyed out. I'm wondering if this recents dock item is just for the moment in time that it's placed there in the dock. Is this the case or am I missing something

Gary Rosenzweig

Kathy: It should auto-update and continue to work. Not sure why it isn't doing that for you, sorry.

Thanks Gary, I tried removing it from the dock and putting it back, both before and after restart but it still doesn't update. Strange for sure.

Hi Gary, I removed 'recent docs' in finder and rechecked 'Recents' again back in the sidebar list. Then I chose to show this Recents in dock, and the exact same thing happens. Running Big Sur 11.5.1. Not sure if that's why or not. Everything else is running fine. Kathy

Kathy: Sorry, I'm not sure why it isn't working for you. Perhaps it is best to get your Mac in front of an expert (Genius Bar) so they can see exactly what you are doing and work to diagnose the issue.

Comments Closed.

Navigating Around In the Finder On a Mac

Comments: 5 Responses to “Navigating Around In the Finder On a Mac”

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