Creating Convenient Saved Searches For Your Mac Finder Sidebar

You can use Saved Searches on your Mac, also called Smart Folders, to give you easy access to files in your Finder sidebar. This can be a handy way to see recent documents, all documents of a specific kind, or even your most commonly-used apps. Learn how to create, edit, delete and store Saved Searches.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's talk about Saved Searches and how they can be a great enhancement to your Finder Sidebar.
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So a Saved Search is just like doing a regular search in the Finder but you can go back to it without having to enter in all the search criteria again. You can do that with a single click. It doesn't sound too exciting by itself but once you see it in action you realize how much it can increase your productivity. For instance, let's do a search. When you start a search in the Finder you want to make sure that you're in the right location to begin with. So in this case I'm in my Documents folder. That's exactly where I want to do the search.
Now normally I would click here and start typing something in the Search field. But if I want to search for something like a Kind of file it's better to use File, Find or Command F to start. That skips over the Search field and brings you right to some sort of search criteria here. The default is Kind is Any which means All Files. So all I need to do is type something here and it will start searching by keyword. But instead I can change from Kind is Any to Kind is and then choose a type of file. Let's keep is simple and just choose PDF. This is going to find all of my PDF files saved in the Documents folder. 
Now to make this a Saved Search all I need to do is click the Save button here. So let's do that and see what happens. So I'll click it and you can see it asks me to save the saved search. It will default its location to a Saved Searches folder in the Library folder. Let's keep it there for now. Now let's name it something better than Searching Documents. We know what this is. This is all my PDF's in my Documents folder. Let's call this something simple like PDF's. Now before I save it let me make sure this Add To Sidebar is checked. I'll hit Save and it will do two things.
It will save this as a file called PDF's.Saved Search in that Library folder. But more importantly it puts it here in the Sidebar. Now anytime I want to see all the PDF's in my Documents folder all I need to do is click here.
Let's say we're looking somewhere else. We're in Documents and we're looking in a folder and we're moving onto the next task. We want to start off by looking at all the PDF's. I just click here and it instantly gives me that saved search. This is updated to the current moment. So any PDF's I've added or removed since I created the saved search that's all going to be reflected here. I'm seeing the most up-to-date information. Not only that but the Sort order is maintained. So here I'm using List View and I can do Date Modified for instance. Change it so the most recently modified files are at the top. Now if I go somewhere else, like looking in my Documents folder, looking here, I can go into List View. I can Sort By Name here, you can see Sort by Name or Size. Whatever it is. If I go to PDF's you'll see it goes to Date Modified sorted with the most recent.
You can do it with any View. So I could actually go and say give me Icon View. Go to Sort By and let's say I want the Last Opened first. So now I can go somewhere else and be looking there and then say I want to go back to PDF's you can see how it remembers I want Icon View sorted in this particular way.
Now remember the Finder Sidebar appears in Open Dialogue boxes. So that means if I'm in Preview here and I'm opening a file you'll see PDF's right there. I can click on that and now I can go and see the same search results here. 
Now you have some options here. I can Control click here in the Sidebar and I can do various things. One is I can show the search criteria. So bring it up as a Search just like before. Now I can make changes and then hit Save and it will Update that saved search. I can also Control click and Rename this. So if I want to change its name I can Control click and Remove from Sidebar although it's still in that saved searches folder that we'll look at here in a second. I can add it to the Dock and it appears in the right hand side of the Dock. Now you can see there's the PDF's.
Now if I choose Show in Enclosing Folder it takes me to that saved Searches folder in the Library folder there. So now I can really delete it if I need to. I can select it and I can throw it away. I can also Move it. I can put it anywhere I want on the Desktop or put it in a special folder I've created. So if I have a lot of these, and I don't want them to be in this Library folder here, I can really put them anywhere I want. Notice if I double click on this it will open it up in the Finder. 
So let's look at some more examples. Let's say I want to see my most recently opened documents. It will be useful because chances are that's what I'm working with right now. So first let me go to where I want to start. In this case in my Documents folder is a good place. I could also just say all of my iCloud Drive if I want or my Home folder. Anywhere. Now let's do Command F to start a search. Instead of Kind let's say Last Opened Date. We can also do Contact Modified Date. If you don't see what you want here choose Other and you get a huge list of different search criteria. 
So we'll just do the Last Opened Date and then I'll say it's Within the Last, let's say, 14 days. Now I can see all of the files results there. Let's do it in List View. Let's sort it here by Date Last Opened. If you don't see the column that you want you can do Command J and then you can Add or Remove different columns. So now we've got this sorted by Date Last Opened, within the last 14 days. So now we can Save this and this would be a convenient Recents search here. So now I can see Recents. I see all my most recently opened files. 
A more useful thing may be not to say All Files but to actually see only documents or a specific type of document. So I'll Control click here and I will Show Search Criteria and then the Plus button there and create another criteria for it. Let's say I want the Kind is just Documents. Maybe I want to go and say just Pages Documents. So I can choose Other here and type Pages. Now I'll just see the Pages documents that were last opened within 14 days. So I can hit Save here. So now maybe I would like to change the name here to Recent Pages.
Now let's go and create another one. Let's say I want to see all my Pages documents. That could be useful as well. So I start in my Documents folder. I'll do Command F for a search. The Kind is Other and I'll say Pages. This will show me all my Pages documents in my Documents folder. So I can Save this and I could say Pages Docs. Now the cool thing about that is that I could go into Pages and when I go to Open a new file I'll see it here on the left and I can immediately select that and see all of my Pages documents.
Now let's say I wanted to see more than just Pages documents. I want to see both Pages and Rich Text documents. So let's go here and Show Search Criteria. Then I'm going to add another one here. It's going to be Kind is and let's say Text and we'll narrow it down to Rich Text. Now you see there's no results! Why? Because I'm asking for all documents that are Pages documents and Rich Text documents. Since files would be one or the other, not both, I'm going to come up with no results. So what I can do here is, see these Plus buttons here to add new criteria, instead I'm going to hold down the Option key. Notice the Plus buttons change to three dots. Click on that and you'll come up with this here where it says Any of the following are true. I can change it to Any, All, or None. So you can really get complex with your searches.
I could say Any of the Following are True and I can drag these items under Any. I don't need this default one here named Matches so I'll hit the Minus button there. So now it's Any of the Following are True. Kind is Pages or Kind is Rich Text. Now I have a combination of my Rich Text documents and my Pages documents. I'll Save that and now Pages Docs will show RTF files as well.
Now there are all sorts of things you can do with Saved Searches. For instance here's something very different. Let's go to the Applications folder. Here are all my applications. Now let's do Command F to search in the Applications folder. I'm going to select Kind is Applications because there may be things in your applications folder that aren't applications. They're support files and things like that. So now I just see the dot app files in my Applications folder. Let's add another criteria here and say Last Opened Date is within the last 7 days. So only applications I've opened in the last 7 days. It's a shorter list there. So let's Save this out and we'll call it Apps. Now that's here in the left sidebar. Now I can be somewhere else and any time I want to go and open an app I can go to Apps here, and I can see, I even have it sorted by Date Last Opened, all of my apps. My most common ones will be at the top. 
You can Control click and say Add to Dock and it's even more useful here in the Dock. As a matter of fact you can Control Click on it and you can change it so that it sorts by Last Opened. Now, of course, you see the last opened is right there at the bottom, the closest one to click on. Then you have your most recent ones there. You can even change it to a List View and now you can click on it and then now in this view you have the most recent one at the top.
An important thing to remember is that even though Smart Searches kind of feel like folders, they even look like folders if you look at the icon, but they're not folders. They're not locations. They are the results of a search. So you can use them to access files, to open files, to find files. But you can't use them as a location to save files because they are not really a location. They're search results. So you still want to think about where you want to Save that Pages document. But when you go to open it up it may be more convenient to actually use a Saved Search that shows you the most recent Pages document.

Comments: One Response to “Creating Convenient Saved Searches For Your Mac Finder Sidebar”

Chris Mundy

4 years ago

Hi Gary,

Great video (again). Another point to add value to your saved search, which you're probably aware of, is to use the view functionality, 'Arrange By'.

e.g. Say I want to list Pages documents when they were created.

Create a search as you describe in your video on Pages documents.

Then go to: Finder > View > Arrange By > Date Created. Then the magic happens.

It groups the documents by, Previous 7 Days, Previous 30 Days, Months then Years.

Comments Closed.

Creating Convenient Saved Searches For Your Mac Finder Sidebar

Comments: One Response to “Creating Convenient Saved Searches For Your Mac Finder Sidebar”

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