Finder
Your file management app now makes it easier to work in the cloud
Even Finder has a few new features. One feature that will be welcome if you’re not used to the fairly subtle convention of selecting a file or folder and then clicking its name or pressing ® to rename it is 60> the addition of a Rename option to the contextual menu that appears when you ≈- click the item instead.
If you use Terminal or programming tools in which you need to refer to a file or folder, typing the whole path to it is tedious and prone to error, but you don’t have to run the risk. 61> Instead, ≈- click the item and then hold down
å; you’ll notice that the usual Copy command in the menu changes to ‘Copy <Item> as Pathname’. With Terminal, you could already preview achieve this by dragging an item onto its window to insert its path into the command line, but the ability to copy it to the Clipboard provides greater flexibility over what you do with that information – and it’s also easier than dragging a file from one space into another if you prefer to run Terminal in full-screen mode.
Yosemite already puts progress bars on each file being synced with iCloud Drive. However, you might find yourself saving not just the odd small document now and then, but much larger amounts of data between your Macs and possibly iOS devices too.
62> To be sure that syncing activity between your Mac and iCloud Drive has completed, Finder’s sidebar displays a circle next to iCloud Drive (if you’ve removed it, go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar to get it back) which gradually fills to reflect progress. This is helpful if, say, you need to get some files onto a MacBook before departing. Open up a Finder window, watch the progress indicator and only close the lid once the circle disappears, telling you the sync is complete.
With an especially large amount of data transferring to or from iCloud Drive, the circle in the sidebar might fill pretty slowly. So, Finder has a second, more detailed progress indicator avaiilable. 63> Turn on its path bar (View > Show Path Bar) and then browse to iCloud Drive (Go > iCloud Drive). At the bottom of the Finder window you’ll see an indication of how many items are being copied, the total amount of data being copied, and an updating total of how much has copied across so far. Note that the figure to the left that shows remaining capacity isn’t indicative of your iCloud Drive space; that’s referring to your Mac’s free space.