Tips For Getting The Most Out Of the Finder Sidebar

Here are 20 tips for using the Mac Finder Sidebar, one of the primary tools you have to help you get to and organize files on your Mac.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a close look at the Finder Sidebar. MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 800 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So when you're looking at files and folders in the Finder window you'll see the sidebar on the left. If you don't see it here you can Hide it or Show it by going to View and then there's Hide Sidebar or Show Sidebar. You can also adjust the size of the Finder Sidebar by clicking on the line to the right of the sidebar and you can drag it right or left. If you want to get it back to a default size just double click the line and it will snap to that position.
One of the problems I see people having with the Finder sidebar is they can't find something there because a category is closed. Notice that you've got categories. Favorites, iCloud, Locations, and Tags. You could close one of those by simply moving your cursor over the name of the category, like iCloud. Then this button will appear. The button is not there if the cursor isn't over it. So you have to move your cursor over it and then you'll see it. Then you can click on it and it will either collapse or expand that category. So if you don't see, for instance, iCloud Drive then it might be simply because you have to expand that category to show the items under it.
Now one way to customize what's listed here is to go to Finder, Preferences. From there go to Sidebar. Here you'll see Show These Items in the Sidebar. There's a bunch of checkboxes. The categories match the categories you see here. So under Favorites there are checkboxes for each one of these things. So if you don't want to see Recents, or you do, you can check or uncheck this box. You can do that with all these other items here as well to add or remove these. Now the same thing here in iCloud and in Locations. Now these are standard items. If you have custom items they won't be listed here. We'll look at those in a minute. But do note that if you remove all of the items then the category disappears. So, for instance, if I uncheck all three iCloud things, iCloud is completely gone.
Favorites is kind of a catch-all category where you can add anything you want to that. You can even move items say from iCloud or Locations up to Favorites. So, for instance, you can move your Documents folder from iCloud up into Favorites. It will be there instead of in iCloud. So if you'd rather not see iCloud Drive and Desktop you could just close those or remove them there in Finder Preferences, but have Documents here in Favorites. Now you can also move any folder you want to Favorites. For instance here I am in my Documents folder. Let's say I want to move these two project folders to Favorites. I can drag and drop the folder and put it into Favorites. Now notice when I go to do this if I'm over one of the items here like this then I'm actually dragging it into that folder. So dragging it like this would actually put Project Beta inside Project Alpha. It would actually move the files and folders in there. But if I move so that I'm below or above one of these items and you see a line like this with a little circle to the left that means I can add it now to the Finder Sidebar. The actual folder itself is exactly where it's always been. Things aren't actually located in the Finder Sider. These are simply shortcuts or aliases to that item. So now if I want to get to Project Alpha or Project Beta I can do so easily here by using the Finder Sidebar. 
To Remove items it's pretty easy as well. You can simply drag and move it far enough to the right to where you see the X appear. Then drop and it removes it. It's still in Documents. I haven't moved the actual item itself. It's just the Finder Sidebar alias that's moved. You could also right click, two finger click on the trackpad, or hold down the Control key and click and bring up the Context menu for anyone of these. One of the items you get here when you do that in the Sidebar is Remove From Sidebar. 
Now one thing people may want to do is double-list something that's in iCloud Drive like, for instance, you may want to have your Documents folder in Favorites and iCloud. But if I move it up like this you could see now it's just in Favorites, not in iCloud. Instead leave it in iCloud and then go to the level above, in this case iCloud Drive, there's my Documents folder. If I drag that then to Favorites now I've got Documents in Favorites and iCloud. Notice when I click on it in one or the other it's the same. Just two different ways of accessing the same thing.
One of the way to use the Finder Sidebar is to Drag and Drop an item into the folders here. So, for instance, if I wanted to move something to my Desktop folder I could simply drag it from the Finder window right here. It would put it into the Desktop folder. As a matter of fact if I hover enough it will actually open the Desktop folder and then I could move it there myself or drop it into a subfolder.
Now in addition to putting folders under Favorites you can also put other things like Applications and Files. So let's go to the Applications folder. I can use the sidebar for that since I've got it there. Let's say I want to put Numbers in the sidebar under Favorites. If I drag it there it won't actually work. But if I use the Command key and then drag I can drop it in there and I have the application there now. What can I do with that? Well, one thing I could do is click it and it will launch the application. The other thing I could do is I could drag and drop files onto it to open up that file. You could also add files to Favorites there with the same trick. Hold the Command key down and drag the file there. Now you've got that file located there. Then to open that file all you need to do is click it and it opens up. 
Another thing you'll see in the Sidebar is Tags. You'll see a category here under Tags that you can open and close. You can View all the files that use that Tag by simply clicking on the tag and it will show you all those files. It's kind of an alternative way of organizing things. You can select a file and then you could either use the Tags button at the top of the Finder window to Add and Remove Tags or you could use Command i or File, Get Into and here at the top you can add tags. You could also add them when you Save a file in most apps. Now you can customize which tags appear here to make this more useful. Go back to Finder, Preferences and go to Tags and you'll see Show These Tags in the Sidebar. So you an pick exactly which tags you want to see, just like maybe these three here, instead of having all of your tags listed. 
Also if you go to Sidebar here there's an option you can't quite see because it's off the bottom of the screen. But you can checkoff whether or not All Tags is shown here at the bottom. The All Tags item, if you click that will then give you another sidebar that lists all the tags and then you could pick one of those tags to show. Also you can Control click, right click, or two finger click on a trackpad on one of the tags to get a variety of different options here including removing it from the sidebar, deleting the tag completely, renaming the tag, or setting the tag's color. 
Now while you can add items here under Favorites, you could also add items under iCloud if the folder is in iCloud Drive. So, for instance, we're looking here at my Documents folder which is in iCloud Drive which means that this folder is actually in iCloud Drive. Which means I could actually add it here to iCloud instead of Favorites. You could also rearrange these categories. If you'd rather iCloud be at the top you could click and drag iCloud up here to the top and now it's above Favorites. When you click on one of these, of course, opens up that item and now the Finder window is taken over by that. But you can also have it open up another Tab by holding the Command key down and clicking. So I'll Command click Documents and now you could see the Pictures tab is still there. Documents is a new tab. You could also Control click, right click, or two finger click on a trackpad and you use Open a New Tab.
Now there's an interesting behavior if you Option click one of these. So if go, say, between Documents and Pictures like that, you could see I'm in the same Finder window. But if I Option click on Pictures you could see it reopens the Finder window and the Pictures folder is actually a slightly different size in a slightly different location. Let's exaggerate that a little bit more and put it here. Now if I Option click Documents you could see it closed that Finder window and opened a new Finder window with Documents setup just like it was before. So I could go back and forth between them like that. However, if I just click on Pictures then you could see it uses the current window and just loads the Pictures folder up in it. 
Now another place you'll see the Finder Sidebar is when you go to Open or Save a document. Let's launch Pages here. It's going to prompt me to Open a document. Notice that this is kind of like a mini Finder window. I've got the Sidebar here in the left. So any special folders and things I've put in Favorites will appear here. You'll also might see some extra things like, for instance, notice it put this special Pages folder in iCloud here under iCloud in addition to whatever else you've got. But if there's a special folder you want to appear here then you can make that happen. For instance let's go ahead and add this Project folder back here. Now when I go to Pages you could see it's there and I can just simply click on it and have access to those files real easily whenever I open Pages.
Now when I go to Save a document I get the same thing. I get the Sidebar here on the left including any folders that I've created. So I can access things like Documents or the special folder that I added to my Favorites here. So if you include the folders that you use the most under Favorites you'll find it a lot easier to Open and Save files as you do your work throughout the day. Note that the keyboard shortcuts, Option Command S to Hide and Show the Sidebar work when you're in these dialogues as well.

Comments: 8 Responses to “Tips For Getting The Most Out Of the Finder Sidebar”

James Lowry

3 years ago

How do we add "ARCHIVE" and "TIME MACHINE" to finder locations ?

Gary Rosenzweig

James: Those are the names of MY external drives. You would see the names of your drives, if you have any.

Robert Powell

Thanks for this. If I create a documents in the favorites, will it be stored on my computer? Giving me one documents file in iCloud, one on the MacBook.
Thanks.

Robert: You don't create document in favorites. That's just a list of folders to give you easy access to them. You create a document inside one of those folders. If that folder is on iCloud Drive it would be in iCloud Drive and possibly also on your computer depending on your settings. Otherwise it would just be on your computer.

Michael H. Rasmussen

Any idea what the "On My Mac" folder in favourites is. You have it deselected in the video. It seems to point to nowhere on the harddrive.

Michael: Sometimes apps default to saving files to their own special iCloud Drive folders. Usually they also offer a non-iCloud version too. That would be this "On My Mac" folder. There's no point using it unless you are in a rush or something. Save documents into your Documents folder.

Hubert

Hi Gary. Leanred a lot again today, in particular about tags which I had underestimated. I have a series of files which I now would like to tag (with a custom tag). Is it possible to select a whole range of docs in finder (or somewhere else) and tag them with the same tag or can it only be done one by one? Many thanks.

Hubert: Yes. You can select multiple files and tag them all at once. Try it and you'll see.

Comments Closed.

Tips For Getting The Most Out Of the Finder Sidebar

Comments: 8 Responses to “Tips For Getting The Most Out Of the Finder Sidebar”

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