Tricks for Finder and the desktop

You work with files all the time, so be smart about it

You probably spend more time using Finder than you realise, even if it’s mostly in the form of Open and Save dialogs. Let’s start saving time by learning the file manager’s hidden tricks. First though, let’s stop its alert sounds giving you a scare.

7 Alert volume

The sound that plays when files finish copying can be loud compared to, say, your music. You can set alert volume (for all apps) separately in > System Prefs > Sound > Sound Effects.

8 Sort Finder groups

After you set Finder to group files by attribute, you can tell it to sort the contents of those groups. In its View menu, hold å and Group By becomes Sort Groups By. So, when having a clearout, you might look for typical culprits by grouping by Kind, then sort by Size to see the largest in each group first.

9 No eject key? No bother!

Now that no Mac comes with a CD/DVD drive, you might buy a USB drive. But you’ll find its eject button won’t work in macOS (by design). If your keyboard has no eject key, you needn’t switch to Finder to remove discs! In /System/Library/Core Services/Menu Extras, open Eject. menu to gain an equivalent in the menu bar.

10 Resize Finder columns

Column view is a fast way to dig down into your drives. Rather than resize columns as you go, ≈-click on a column divider to find options for resizing the column to the left or all of them.

11 From tiny icons…

The icon in a window’s title bar isn’t just decorative. Click and hold it briefly and it’ll dim, then drag and drop it onto Mail’s icon in the Dock, say, to attach the file’s latest saved version to a new email, or the desktop or another location in Finder to move the file there. Dragging the icon from a Finder window and dropping it onto an Open or Save dialog will focus the latter on the location shown in the Finder window.

12 Make templates

In Finder, select a document you’ve created, press ç+I and tick ‘Stationery pad’ near the Info window’s top. When you try to open that file, Finder will create a copy alongside and open the copy. This helps in apps that lack built-in ways to manage templates. The new file’s name will have ‘copy’ and perhaps a number appended to it; see opposite for a way to rename and move the file without going back to Finder.

13 Merge two folders

You’ve got two folders of the same name but different contents that you want to merge. You don‘t have to open one to drag its contents to achieve this. Hold å and drag one of the folders into the same location as the other.

There must be at least one file of a different name in either folder for Merge to appear. For any with the same name, those in the folder where things are being merged are kept; those in the first are ignored. The first folder is left untouched, in case you make a mistake.

14 Presto! Instant peace

You can schedule a period during which notifications won’t appear at the top right or play sounds by going to System Prefs > Notifications > Do Not Disturb, and you can flick a switch at the top of Notification Centre to enjoy the silence at any time. But there’s a faster way! Hold å and click Notification Centre’s icon to toggle Do Not Disturb.

Prefer to do it from your keyboard? Head to > System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control, tick Turn Do Not Disturb On/Off in the list on the right, then press the key combo you want to use for this – it must include one or more modifier keys: ß, ≈, å and ç). If your Mac has a Touch Bar, go to the Keyboard pane’s Keyboard tab, click Customise Touch Bar and drag the Do Not Disturb button to the bar’s Control Strip.

15 Reorder status icons

Type ‘show menu bar’ in System Prefs’ search bar to find others you can add to the menu bar. Many of these icons can be rearranged: hold ç and drag one left or right. One is fixed in place: Notification Centre at the far right.

To remove an unwanted icon, hold ç, drag it off the bar and wait for an ‘X’ to appear, then let go.

16 A trick with stacks

Drag and drop folders you need often into the area just left of the Trash to create shortcuts to them, known as stacks. Dragging a stack off the Dock removes it, so you might think you can’t use them to easily focus an Open/Save dialog on your favourite folders – but you can! You just need to hold ç before you drag the stack from the Dock.