Easy Access To Frequently Used Files

Closed captioning for this video is available on YouTube: Easy Access To Frequently Used Files.

I often see that Mac users have a file or two that they're accessing all the time and they want to have easy access to it. Instead of putting it in the Documents folder they put it maybe on the Desktop.

So let's take a look, for instance, here in a Finder window. I'm going to look under a subfolder and I've got a file called Daily Journal. Say this is something that I need to open every day and write something in it.

So you can see how going into my Documents folder, then Project A, and then finding it here and opening it is far too many steps. So a lot of people will just move it to the Desktop and it just lives there on the Desktop. They can easily open it by double clicking it there.

But I don't like this solution because I'd rather have this file where it should be properly filed in the proper subfolder in the my Documents folder where I want it to be. So how can you still have easy access to it while at the same time having it reside in the proper place.

So here's one option to get easy access to it while leaving it in its proper place. Instead of dragging it to the desktop I'm going to drag it to the desktop but before I release I'm going to hold down the Command and the Option key. You see how the arrow there changes to a little curve. This means instead of copying the file there it's going to leave an alias or sometimes called a shortcut to the file. The file is still there but you can see here this little arrow and that tells me that this is an alias to that file.

I can double click this one to open it. The file lives here and I can still double click it to open it there but this alias is kind of a shortcut that lives on my desktop. It gives me easy access to the file. I can even select it and Delete it and the original file still stays there. All I've done is gotten rid of the shortcut. So that's one way to do it if you really like to use the desktop.

However, I like to keep a clean desktop so there are other ways to do it. Like, for instance, I can drag this file to the Dock, the right side of the Dock. Add it here and that also creates an alias. I does it automatically. I don't have to hold down any special keys. You can see the original file is here but there is a shortcut to it in the Dock. Now a single click opens the file. I always have access to the file by just going down to the Dock and clicking on it.

You also have two ways to add a shortcut to a file to the Finder window itself. One is to drag it over to the Favorites section here. But don't just drag it over there because it that will then allow you to drop it into one of these folders and move it. You don't want to do that. You want to add a shortcut to it. So you want to drag while holding the Command key and then you can insert it inbetween items. You can still drop it into something like that but say if I wanted to put it between applications and desktop here I can do it. Now you can see that I've got that file as a Favorite there. It's still in its regular location but I can easily open it with one click in the Finder Favorites.

You can also add it to the Toolbar up here. So you would drag with the Command key held down and you can see you get a plus button there and you can add the file there. It's in every Finder window. One click opens it up.

Incidentally, to get rid of these things you can drag this off using Command, you have to hold down Command. Drag it off and it goes away. The same thing with the sidebar here. Actually I don't even need to use Command. Just drag it far enough away and I see it changes to an X. In the Dock, down below, I can drag that up and out. I have to drag it pretty high up before I can see the remove indicator there. That's how you can get rid of those from those different items.