Mac Finder Go To Folder Advanced Tips

A quick way to get around in the Finder is to use the Go To Folder command, especially if you like using your keyboard more than a mouse or trackpad. Here are some advanced tips that you may not know about.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some advanced tips for using the Go To Folder command in the Mac Finder. 
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Now a Mac user can go their whole lives without ever using the Go To Folder command. It's in the Go Menu and it's right here. It allows you to type to go to a specific folder instead of navigating around using your Mouse or a Trackpad. 
My first tip is that nobody ever uses it with the menu item. The whole point is to use the keyboard to navigate around so you wouldn't want to start by using the Pointer to activate it. Instead you want to use the keyboard shortcut. Shift Command G. So that's what I'll do throughout this entire video. So Shift Command G will bring it up. Of course you have to be using a Finder window for this to happen. It doesn't take you to the Finder automatically. But there are some other cases I'll talk about later where you can use this special command. 
Now how it works is pretty simple. You can type the path to a folder and then press Return and it will jump to it. So, for instance, I have a folder called Projects in my Documents folder. I can type the full path to it. So that would be /Users/macmost/Documents/Projects. Then if I press Return you could see it jumps to that folder. But the whole point is to get somewhere fast which means typing a full path name, from the top level, doesn't make much sense. Fortunately, you don't have to do that. You could start typing the name of a folder from the current location. So I'm in my Documents folder here and I can see, for instance, there is a folder called Notes. If I type Notes it will recognize that I'm already in my Documents folder and find the Notes folder. Likewise, it will also look in the Home folder. So for instance in your Home folder you've got folders like Music, Pictures, Downloads, and such. I can start typing there. You'll see they will have a section here called Go To Folder in Current Location and Go To and then it is going to have your Home folder here. So you can very quickly get to this folder if it is in your Home folder. You can click on it but you can also use the Down Arrow to get to it and then press Return. Users of the Terminal will recognize also that you can use Shortcuts, like tilde, which is the key above the Tab key on US keyboards. You need to use Shift to use tilde and slash and now indicate your Home folder. So you can see how it already includes the path to my Home folder there. You could also use Period/ to represent the current folder, in this case Documents, and then type there. Some people prefer to do that especially if you use the Terminal a lot. 
Now another way to speed things up is you can Auto-Complete using the Tab key. So, for instance, I'm here in my Documents folder. Let's say I want to go to the folder named PDF Examples. You can see it here at the bottom. So I can start typing PDF Examples and as soon as I type enough to make that the top choice there I can just press Tab and it will fill the entire thing in. If it is ambiguous which one I mean, so I'll just type P here and there are a bunch of folders that start with P. If I press Tab it will fill in the first one but not Auto-Complete it. The second time I press Tab it will give me a system beep, so in other words telling me it still doesn't know which one I want. But if I do it a third time it actually will do it. You could also just use the Down Arrow. So I can type P and then I can use the Down Arrow to go to the one I want. Once I'm there pressing Tab will Auto-Complete. Likewise using Tab to get to something, then Return, will actually just jump there. So if I type P right here and I go down to Personal and press Return and it will jump right there. I didn't even have to Auto-Complete since I had selected it with the Down Arrow. 
Notice it also recognizes Recents here. You could just start typing something that is in a Recent Folder there. So, for instance, I've got the Movies Folder which isn't in my current location. I'm in Documents now. But if I start typing Movies it will pick that out of the Recents and I can just press Return and it will jump there. 
Now if you want to access External Drives you can do that as well. I can do that by explicitly typing slash and then Volumes and then slash and then start typing the name of the volume. So /Volumes/A for instance for Archive and there it is. I can tab to Auto-Complete and then continue to search or I could have just hit Return to go to it. But you don't typically need to actually type slash Volume. You could just type the name of the Drive and if it is a recent place you've been to it should find it just with that name. 
One advantage to using Go To Folder is you can just as easily get to Hidden Folders as anywhere else. So, for instance, if I were to go to my Home folder here I won't see my Library Folder there. It's there but it is hidden. I can get to it by going to the Go Menu and holding down the Option Key and there it is. I can see that it is located in my Home Folder like that. But I could also use Go To Folder and type this. You can see it will find it just like anything else. 
Now I know there are people that also like to get into Packages. Packages are basically folders that masquerade as files. They actually have a bunch of files in them. For instance Libraries typically are packages. So you can get into this by using Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on a trackpad, and then Show Package Contents. Once I'm in here, for instance, I can see all the different iMovie projects. So here's one called Example, for instance. My Path now includes getting into the Package. Well you can do the same thing using Go To Folder without having to open the Package. So I can go back up to this level here and there's that iMovie Library. I can start typing and there's the iMovie Library there. I can Auto-Complete it like that, type Slash, and I can actually look inside it. So there's that folder inside the package and I can jump right to it. So a quick way to get into Package Files. 
Now I mentioned before that Go To Folder only works in the Finder but there is an exception. That exception is Dialogue Boxes where you're asked to either Open, Save, or Export something to a location on your drive. These are basically like little mini Finder windows. So, for instance, here I am in Pages. If I were to go to Save this document for the first time using Command S or File Save, I'm now in a File Save Dialogue. You can use Shift Command G to bring up the Go To Folder box here and type in it. So I can go to Documents, and say, Projects like that and then when I press Return it changes location to that location. Now I can Save. The same thing is true when you go to Open a Document. Go To Open and I can do Shift Command G and it brings up the Go To Folder box. It works when you Export too. So I can select a few photos there. I can do File, Export, Export these photos. Select my options and then I'm in the Export Dialogue here to choose a location. I can do Shift Command G there as well. 
You can actually use Go To Folder to Access Tags even though that really has nothing to do with folders. So notice here I've got several different Tags. I can access those by typing the name of the Tag. So I'll bring up the box and then I'll start typing the name of a tag. Like that. You'll see Go To and then shows Tags and that Tag. When I select it it's the same as if I selected the Tag here in the left Sidebar. But an advantage is that you can access tags that aren't in the Sidebar. Under All Tags I saw there was a Business Tag, for instance. That's not in the Sidebar here. So I'll use Go To Folder and I'll type Business and there's the Business Tag. I can just use the Down Arrow to go to it and Return and now I'm seeing all the files that have that Tag applied. 
Now you can actually do more than just change the location of a current Finder window with Go To Folder. So let's go to Daily Reports. I'll Auto-Complete that and then Filed Reports and Auto-Complete that. Now, if I were to Press Return it would simply take me to that Folder change of location. However, if instead I hold the Command Key down and Press Return it opens up a new Tab, leaving that previous location in another Tab, like that. Now this only happens if, in Finder, Settings, you've got under General, Open Folders in Tabs instead of new windows. Now I can also Open up a New Window using the same command but this time I'm going to do Option and Command and then Return. Now I get a second window leaving that original window untouched. There's one more. If you instead hold Shift Command and then Press Return or click you will open up the Terminal App and go directly to this location. So you can see that I'm located there in the new terminal window. 
Now notice how I Auto-Completed Daily Reports and Filed Reports by typing the first few letters of each. You can do that. But you can also can take the first letter of each word. This is an interesting trick. You've got d and r for Daily Reports and f and r for Filed Reports. Watch what happens if I type d r . It recognizes Daily Reports and even Bolds those two letters there. It even finds some other things. Developer has d and it ends with an r and Doc Folders has d and it's got an r towards the end there. These should be things either in your Current Location or Recent Finds. So I can now tap Tab to Auto-Complete that and type f r and it finds Filed Reports. Then to Auto-Complete that. So you can use long folder names with lots of words, be really descriptive, and know that in Go To Folder you can easily access them by just typing the first letter of each word. 
Now one of the things about using this is that if I were to use it right now I'd end up inside of Filed Reports.What if I wanted to actually go to the folder above it but have Filed Reports just the highlighted or selected folder. You can do that but you have to use your mouse or trackpad. You need that to bring up the Context Menu with a right click or Control Click or two-finger click on a trackpad. If you do that then you have Show In Enclosing Folder. You do that and now you get the Enclosing Folder shown in the folder that was indicated there, that is selected. Note that it depends where you click. If I were to do that here in Daily Reports and Show Enclosing Folder then it is actually going to go to the Documents folder and select Daily Reports. So it's reacting to the actual thing you're clicking on here. Do it for the last one if that is what you want. 
Now sometimes you can actually use Go To Folder to go to a File. So, for instance here in the Business Folder I've got a bunch of different files. I've got a bunch of them named Project Report, for instance. Some text files, some PDF files and things like that. So I can use Go To Folder then I can start typing Business here and Auto-Complete that. Do a slash and now if I typed P, for project reports, notice it does bring up Files. So, I can now go down and select one of these files. If I press Return at this point what happens is it goes to that folder and had that file selected. So it doesn't actually open the file. Just goes to it and shows it to you. But you can Control Click, two-finger click or right click on this and choose Open if you want. Although it is just as easy to go to it and then do Command O on the keyboard and it will open it up so you don't have to use your mouse or trackpad to get there. 
So if you like using the Go To Folder command in the Finder or you're just discovering it now for the first time, there are a bunch of Advance Tips to help you make the most of it. Thanks for watching.
Comments: 2 Responses to “Mac Finder Go To Folder Advanced Tips”

Sheldon
7 months ago
Thanks bunches
Art Busbey
Great tips. Been using Go To Folders for decades and had never looked into it in such depth. Thanks!
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Mac Finder Go To Folder Advanced Tips

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