Customizing the New Finder Window Shows Setting

You can decide which folder you start in when you create a new Finder window or add a new Finder tab. Some locations are mode useful than others. Picking the right location for you can improve your productivity.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can set the starting location for any Finder window to something useful.
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Now in the Finder when you go to open a New Finder Window it's going to open to a particular location. Every time you open a new Finder Window it's going to open up to that location. The setting for that is in Finder Settings. If you look in General you'll see New Finder Windows, Show. So you can set this to a variety of things. Let's go through them. 
The first two are top level areas. If you set it to your Mac then when you create a new Finder Window it's going to go to the top level. You'll see things like the different drives you've got and a way to access drives that are on the network. This could be useful if you're used to starting there at the top level, having to go down. Maybe you have lots of external drives. Maybe you've got network locations and you just want to start here. But it is not for everyone. It's even more unlikely that you want to use the Macintosh Hard Drive level. This, of course, would be named differently depending upon your hard drive. But you can see here if I go there I'm starting at the top level. Going to System or the System Library, that's not very useful. If you're going to go to Applications you're probably just going to use Launchpad or Spotlight to launch an app. If you want to go to your files you're going to have to dig down into Users and then into your Home folder there. So, I wouldn't recommend that really for anybody. 
The next set gives you a lot of really useful places. One is your Home Folder. So if you set it to your Home Folder, which is the name of your account, then when you create a New Finder Window it will go to the top level of your Home Folder, which usually has things like, say, your movies, music, and pictures folders. If you're not using iCloud Drive you'll see Desktop and Documents here as well. But if you are using iCloud Drive it's not nearly as useful as you most likely have most of your files in your Documents folder and that's not going to be here. 
Now instead you can actually set the starting location to be Desktop or Documents. The Desktop is somewhere I don't recommend you storing any files except maybe temporarily, otherwise it creates lots of clutter on the Desktop. Plus you would have access to the files right here on your Desktop anyway. 
Documents folder this is probably one of the best places to start and it is what I use. When you do this it goes straight to your Documents Folder. It doesn't matter if your Documents Folder is in your Home folder or, in my case, it's in iCloud Drive. It's going to go there. Since I like to organize everything in the Documents folder inside of subfolders that make sense, this is a great starting point for most people. 
However, you could also set it to iCloud Drive. This is a great starting point especially if you've got Desktop and Documents in iCloud Drive. Then you start here at this level. Desktop and Documents are right here but you also have access to other folders you've created at the top level of iCloud Drive or that apps have created there. So a lot of times apps like to create a folder here at the top level to allow it to sync all of the documents and settings across all of your Apple devices. Depending upon how you use your Mac and which apps you use you may find a lot of useful locations right here. If Documents is the main place you want to go, well it is just one more click away. 
Now, there's also Recents. So Recents is not a location. But it is what's called a Smart Folder or Saved Search. When you open a New Finder Window to Recents you're going to get a view of all of your most recently opened files. They are going to be automatically sorted by the last opened at the top. So these are files from all over your Home Folder that you've recently opened. It's going to include tons of files and it is a great way to just get back to that file that you were just working on earlier that day or yesterday because most likely that will be near the top of the list. It doesn't help you organize though because these are in all sorts of different locations. As matter of fact in Recents if you go to View and then Show Path Bar you can see the path for each of these files and find that they are all in different places. So it is a great place to go to quickly open a file but using Recents too much can really hurt you in the long run because you're not taking the time to learn where your files go or taking the time to learn where you placed them. But it is still pretty useful and you can always use the sidebar here and the Go Menu to jump to other places. So as the starting location for a New Finder Window it could be ideal for a lot of Mac users.
Now a lot of times people like to have something different than their Recents Folder as a place to go to. They like to create their own Smart Folder. So, if I go and create a New Finder Window here. Let's go to the Documents Folder and let's say I want to find all my Keynote presentations. Maybe that's a place where I always want to start because my main job is creating Keynote presentations. So I'll do Command F to find here. Do Kind, is Other, and look for Keynote and this will show me all my Keynote presentations stored in the Documents Folder because that's where I've started. I'll Save that and by default it will save to Saved Searches. Then I can easily access this Saved Search, or Smart Folder as it is usually called, anytime I want. As a matter of fact I can it added to the Sidebar for easy access. 
Now unfortunately you cannot assign a Saved Search or Smart Folder to this Finder setting here. You can't add it even though you can choose Other you cannot select this Smart Folder as your other location. But you can do the next best thing which is to save it to a location with many Smart Folders in it. So I've got such a location here as an example. I've just named it Smart Folders and put it in my Documents Folder. Now I'm going to call this Keynote Documents. Now if I go to my Documents Folder and I look in Smart Folders there are all these Smart Folders. If I double click on one it takes me right to the Result of that Saved Search. I can add this folder, because it is a regular folder, here under Other. So now I could go to my Documents Folder. I could find Smart Folders right there and I can choose it as the location. So now when I open a New Finder Window it goes right here. If I had set this to Columns then it works rather nicely.
Let's go and try it again now that I have it set to Columns. You can see I can simply click one of these and see the folders inside it.  So it does take on additional click to jump into your own personal Smart Folder. But you can use that to your advantage by having several Smart Folders. Maybe one with all recent documents. Maybe one with certain types of documents. Or ones that have certain tags applied to them. Or ones that have something in the name. You can create whatever Smart Folders you want. Put them in some folder like this and use that as your starting location for New Finder Windows. 
Finally, of course, you can also use the Other to select any other folder you want. So, for instance, here in the Documents Folder let's say this business folder, that's the main thing. That's where I live. That's where I spend all of my time so I can choose that and now anytime I create a New Finder Window it goes directly to the business folder. I'm still only a click away from other locations but this is just the most convenient location for me to start. 
Also I want to add this not only gives you the starting location for a New Finder Window but also for a new tab. So say I'm here and I want to create a new tab in the Finder. I would usually use Command T for that. But I use the Menu here and you can see how it starts at that location. So it is not just New Finder Windows. It's also New Finder Tabs. 
So take a few minutes to look at your Finder settings and figure out what the ideal starting location is for New Finder Window, Show to optimize your productivity on your Mac. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Customizing the New Finder Window Shows Setting”

Michael

1 year ago

Thanks Gary. Great tutorial. Is there any way of automatically forcing a new tab or new window to open in full screen? Thanks Michael

Gary Rosenzweig

Michael: Not that I can think of. Just start a new window and then use the button or keyboard shortcut to take it full screen. But note that if you are currently viewing a full screen window, then use File, New Window, that new window will also be fill screen.

Steve Cox

Thank you. This was very helpful. I just went from a Mac Pro with High Sierra to a new Mac Studio with Sonoma. I had gotten used to my old Mac and was pretty lost in the new one. I will check out your other videos and classes.

Comments Closed.

Customizing the New Finder Window Shows Setting

Comments: 3 Responses to “Customizing the New Finder Window Shows Setting”

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