How To Create New Folders On Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to create new folders on your Mac and where you should put them. 

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Now if you're new to the Mac you may not know how to create new folders to hold your files. Even if you know how to do it you may not know some of the other ways that you can create new folders and you may sometimes wonder where is the proper place to put a new folder. 

First let's start off with some of the ways to create new folders. If you're already in the Finder, which I am here because I can see a Finder window and I'm at the Documents folder. You can see here at the top left it shows me I'm using the Finder. I can create a new folder at the current location by using File, and then New Folder. Now the place where it is going to create this new folder is what you see at the top of the window. So in this case it's my Documents folder here. I can always Command click on this and see the full path to this folder. So in this case this is the Documents folder at the top level of iCloud Drive. So if I were to create a new folder right now that's exactly where it would create it. You can see here I'm in List View I have the new in alphabetical order since that is how I'm sorting and it's just called Untitled Folder temporarily. But it's automatically set so I can rename it right now. So I can call this My New Folder and then press Return and it has named the new folder. 

So what if you wanted to put a new folder inside one of these. Well, the way to do that would be first go inside it so that the title here shows the location you want. So I'll go into the Examples Folder by double clicking it and you can see I'm in Examples now. Command click shows me the full path. I also see the full path here at the bottom because I have a few and then the Path bar turned on. So if I create a new folder now it will put it right there. If I expand Examples here and I want to actually put a new folder inside it you can't really do that in one step. You would have to go down into this folder, you can do that by double-clicking it or Command O to Open, and then you can use File, New Folder. Then you could either use the Back button or you can use Command and Up Arrow to go back up a level. You can see that new folder there. 

Note that after you create a new folder, even if you don't rename it right away, you can rename it anytime you want by clicking once to select it. Then once it is selected you can press the Return key or click again to enter the rename mode. Then you can give it a name. 

Other views work the same way. So if we go to Icon View here any new folder I create would be in the Documents folder. If I want to create one inside of Examples I need to go to down into Examples and create it here. Even if afterwards I go up a level again with Command Up Arrow or I Command click here and then use this Menu to go up a level. If I do Column View it's the same thing. It is whatever I see up here. So if I select Examples notice that now it tells me that Examples is the current level. So this works a little bit better for creating folders inside of folders because a new folder now will be created in here. 

You can also use a keyboard shortcut to create new folders. You can see it here if I go to the File Menu, New Folder has a keyboard shortcut, Shift Command N. This works just like the Menu does. So I can do Shift Command N. It creates a new folder. I can immediately type the name of the folder and press Return and I've got a New Folder with whatever name I want. 

Also know that if you create the new folder in the wrong location, like say I wanted this to be inside of Examples, it's very easy to just move it afterwards. It's an empty folder so just move it here into the folder you want. 

A third way to create a new folder is to use the Context Menu. You get this by using Control click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse. But you have to do it in an empty location inside the current folder. In List View that's hard to do because this is a solid block of subfolders and perhaps other files. But at the very bottom you do get a bit of blank space and if you Control click, two-finger click or right click here you bring up a Context Menu and you can then select New Folder. It's a little easier to do in Icon View where there is always a lot of blank space. I can select New Folder there or in Column View you often have space here to the right and you can Control click, right click, or two-finger click and select New Folder there as well. 

Another way to create a New Folder is when you actually make a new file in an app. So here I've created a new document in Pages. I did some typing and now I want to Save it. So when I go to File and then Save I can now use the New Folder button that appears at the bottom left. Most apps will have this button here. So now I can go to where I want, so I'll select Examples for instance, and when I click New Folder if I pay careful attention here it will tell me exactly where it is going to create the folder. So in this case it is going to put it inside of Examples. If I hadn't selected Examples there notice how it will put it inside Documents. So be careful what you select  and then double check here before you actually create the new folder. You can give it a name, in this case, before the folder is created. 

There is one more way to create a new folder. This has additional functionality. Let's go into a folder here that has some files in it. You can select one or more files. For instance I'm going to click once to select this file. Then use the Command key to select a few others. I could also click on one file and then Shift Click to select a range. However I do it I've got a selection of files now and if I go to the File Menu notice that there is a command for New Folder with Selection and it will tell you how many items. There is even a keyboard shortcut, Control Command N. When I use this it will create a new folder at the current location and give it a generic name like this. I can see inside the folder now are all the items that I had selected. 

So this is great method to create a new folder when you're trying to organize things. If you have a folder filled with tons of files you can select a bunch of them, create new folders from that selection and continue to do that. Of course if you miss one you can just move it into that folder later on. 

So now that you've seen different ways you can create new folders a question a lot of people have is where do I create new folders. Well, it depends on how you want to organize your things. In general though the Documents folder is the best place to hold all of your files. I find the best practice to be to create all these subfolders under the Documents folder and put all of your files there. Organize them as you like. Maybe by project. Maybe by file type. Maybe by some other attribute. However you want to organize them. Remember you can always reorganize them later on. You can also, of course, place folders inside of folders and go in as deep as you want. 

So I've got this Projects Folder here. Inside the Projects Folder I have some subfolders here for some projects and I can even have subfolders inside of that. Some people may like to create lots of folders with lots of subfolders going down many levels. Others may just want to have a few folders at the top level of Documents. Now one of the reasons I like putting all my files in Documents if because I have my Documents and Desktop folders in iCloud Drive. So everything is available across all of my Macs and my iPhone and my iPad as well. 

But if you have your Documents folder on your local drive that means that it would be in the Home Folder. So if you go Home here's your Home Folder and you may see your Documents folder there. In that case these files wouldn't be available elsewhere but the files under iCloud Drive would be. So you can create folders here as you like as well. It's really up to you how you want to do it. If we go back to the Home Folder here note that anything in the Home folder is always local only. So this is a good place to put files that you don't want in iCloud Drive. For instance, say you work on very large video projects, way too big for you to be uploading and downing from iCloud Drive all the time. Instead you may want to put those in the Movies folder. In the Movies folder you can go ahead and create a new folder in there, call it after the name of the project, and then place all these big video files in that or even use it as your working directory for a video editing app. These would only be local because the Movies Folder is in your Home folder in your Users Folder on your Mac and not part of iCloud Drive. You can do the same things, say, for the Pictures Folder. This might be a good place to store a large collection of images that you're using for a work project. Or perhaps in the Music Folder storing a large collection of sound files. You can always create another folder here, in your Home folder, as well. I've created one as an example called Local Documents and it is basically a place to have documents that I don't want on iCloud Drive because either they are too big or they are just something I only want to be on this Mac, not on any other device. 

Where you create your new folders and how you organize your files is really up to you. Putting them in your Documents folder I find to be a really good practice in keeping things well organized. I find it to be very good for productivity for most people. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.