10 Finder Keyboard Shortcuts Every Mac User Should Know

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten Finder keyboard shortcuts that every Mac user should know.  

Even if you don't use a lot of keyboard shortcuts normally but moving around and doing things in the Finder it can be very useful to know some of the most powerful ones. For instance, in the Finder if you go down into a folder, like I'll go into this demo folder, if you want to go back up you can Command Click here and move back up, or you can use the Back button. But the easiest and most surefire way to do it is to use Command Up. Very easy to remember. The Back button here doesn't always take you where you expect because, for instance, if I were to jump from Documents to Desktop back would take me not up from Desktop but back to Documents. The previous location I was at, not the location above this one. 

Also note if you have a folder selected, like this one, Command Down, as you would expect, will take you into the folder. 

Now when you want to create a new folder you can go to File and New Folder. But the keyboard shortcut for that is Shift Command N. If it's something you need to do often you should use the keyboard for this. Not only because it does it quickly but also you can see right there I'm ready to type the new folder name. Even if I were to use my pointer and go to the Menu item I need to still type to give that folder a good name. 

Now related to that you may notice that New Folder with selection is Control Command N. So if you want to put, say, these four files in a folder you don't have to create the folder first and then move the files. Just select them and do Control Command and N and it creates the folder, puts the files in it, and now you're ready to name it. 

Now there are four views for the Finder. You've got Icon View, List View, Column View, and Gallery View. You can easily switch between them with Command 1, 2, 3, and 4. It's important to switch between them because, well, if there was one of these views that was the best for everybody we would all just have that one view. But because each has its own strength and weaknesses it's very useful to easily be able to switch between them. So you can go to Icon View, go to List View, Column View, and Gallery View.

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When you want to Rename something whether it is a folder or a file if you go to File and look for Rename there it is. You can use it and see you could rename that file. But notice that there was no keyboard shortcut for that. The keyboard shortcut is actually just the Return Key. So just select the file, press Return, and now you're ready to name the file with just the File Name, not the extension selected. However, a quick Command A will select All, just like it does in a word processor and then you can rename the entire file including the extension. 

Now it can be hard to tell what a file contains just by looking at the file name. The icon is often too small to help as well. In Icon View it is usually too small to see the image very well. But a quick press with the Spacebar will bring up Quick Look and show you the file. If it is an image you'll see the image. If it's a PDF you'll see the PDF. Any other type of file it's going to show you what it can. So, this text file it will show me the text inside.  This Numbers file. It'll show me what's in the Number file. It can even move between sheets. But if you don't like how Quick Look takes over everything use Shift Command and P, for Preview, and it brings up a preview to the right. Maybe you're used to seeing this here in Column View. But you can also view it here in List View. It even works in Icon View, like this. You can select a file and then Shift Command P and you get preview here on the right. It stays there so you can select different files and see the preview for each one of them. Another Shift Command P dismisses it. 

Now when you want to Delete a file any Mac user knows you select the file and drag it to the Trash. But you don't have to actually do the drag. You can just select the file and then use Command Delete. You can see it here under Move To Trash. Command and the delete key. That does the same thing as dragging it to the Trash. 

In addition if you hold the Option Key down you can use Option Command Delete to skip the Trash and delete the file immediately. But in general you shouldn't do that unless you have a very good reason. The Trash is a safety net that will prevent you from accidentally deleting files. If you always use Delete Immediately then you'll eventually run into a situation where you accidentally delete the wrong file. 

Now it's often very useful to have more than one Finder window open at the same time. Although I prefer to use Tabs. In File you've got New Tab here or Command T. So, it's really easy to create a new tab and you still have this view of this location here and then another location here. Command T opens up a third Tab and you can even Drag & Drop items between Tabs just by hovering over until it switches and then dropping the item in. 

To close tabs all you need to do is use Command W. Command W closes the current Tab and if there is only this one tab open, Command W would close the entire window. Oh, and if you want to open a new Tab with a selected Folder, like this Examples folder here, use Control Command O and it opens the new tab at the location of the folder that was selected. You can even do it for multiple folders. I'll select these 3 folders here, Control Command O will open 3 tabs.

Now you probably know you can use Command C to Copy and Command V to Paste in any text or graphics app. But you can do it in the Finder too. So, for instance, I'll go into this folder here and I'll select this file and use Command C to copy. Then I'm going to go up and go into another folder here and I can use Command V to paste. What that actually does is paste a copy of the file here. So now I have two versions of this data.numbers file. If I wanted to move the file instead of paste I can hold the Option Key and this changes to Option Command V. So you use Command C to copy and then Option Command V to move this file. That file is no longer in its original location. It's just here. 

Now one of the most important keyboard shortcuts for any use on your Mac, but people forget that also works in the Finder, is Command Z to Undo. Under Edit here you've got Command Z will Undo what you last did. So, for instance, if I don't want this file to have been moved to this folder a Command Z moves it back. If I change a file name a Command Z will undo that. If I were to use Command Delete to move a bunch of files to the trash a Command Z would put them all back. It will remember multiple things. So if I rename this file, rename this file, and rename this file and then do Command Z, Command Z, and Command Z, it will undo each action. 

Now the Go Menu has a ton of different keyboard shortcuts for going to very particular folders. Like your Home folder or Desktop or Documents. But at the very bottom you'll see Shift Command G, Go To Folder. This is very useful because you can literally go to any folder on your Mac as long as you know the path. Typically you would start a path from your Home folder off with tilde and then slash and then continue to type the folder name. But a lot of time of times if you just type the folder name, like remember I've got that demo folder, you can see there it remembers it from recent use. I can do Examples and it will find that folder. I can do the Notes folder that you can see right here and it finds that. I can do the folder I call Personal and it finds that. Just start typing and as soon as you see it as a selected item you press Return and it jumps right to that folder. 

So, even if you're not a fan of keyboard shortcuts knowing these ten will help make you more productive with the Mac's Finder. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.