Chapter 1: Building the Finder of Your Dreams

In This Chapter

Choosing a view mode

Modifying the toolbar

Searching for files from the toolbar

Searching for files with the Find command

Changing view options

Changing Finder preferences

The Finder is the heart of OS X, and as you might expect, it’s highly configurable. You can customize the Finder to present icons, or you can peruse folders with a column view that can pack much more information onscreen at one time. Some folks prefer the default Finder toolbar, and others like to customize it with the applications and features that they use most often.

Decisions like these can help you transform Mountain Lion into Your Personal Operating System — and every OS X power user worth the title will take the time to apply these changes because an operating system (OS) that presents visual information the way that you want to see it is easier and more efficient to use.

No need for a hammer or saw — when you’re building the Finder of your dreams, the only tools that you need are your cursor and keyboard!

Will That Be Icons or Lists or Columns . . . or Even a Flow?

The default appearance of a Finder window in OS X uses the familiar large-format icons that have been a hallmark of the Macintosh OS since Day One — but there’s no reason you have to use them. (In fact, most OS X power users I know consider the icon view mode rather inefficient and slow.) Besides Icon view, as shown in Figure 1-1, OS X offers three other window view modes: List, Column, and Flow.

To switch to any of the four view modes, click its button on the Finder window toolbar (the current view is highlighted), or choose View⇒As Icons/As List/As Columns/As Cover Flow. OS X places a helpful check mark next to the current view mode. Keyboard lovers can hold down and press the 1, 2, 3, or 4 keys to switch views.

OS X old-timers will thrill to the slider control at the bottom-right corner of Finder windows in Icon view mode. Check it out: Drag this control to the right to expand the size of the icons within the window, and drag the control to the left to reduce the icon size! (This is A Big Thing for those who prefer Icon view because and it makes quite a difference for folks with less-than-perfect eyesight.) Hint: The Finder window Status bar must be displayed to see the slider control, so if the Status bar is hidden, choose View⇒Show Status Bar.

List view: Another feature familiar to long-time Mac owners, List view displays the folders on the volume in a hierarchical fashion. To display the contents of a folder, you can click the right-facing small triangle next to the folder name (called a disclosure triangle, believe it or not), and it rotates downward to indicate that you expanded the folder. Alternatively, double-click the folder icon to display the contents in a Finder window. To collapse the contents of the folder, click the disclosure triangle again; it rotates back to face the right. Figure 1-2 illustrates the same Finder window in List view.

To sort the items in the list by the field in a column heading — like Size or Kind — click the heading. Click the heading again to sort the items in reverse order. And resize a column by dragging the right edge of the column heading.

Column view: Figure 1-3 shows the same window in Column view, in which the volumes on your OS X system are displayed on the left. Each column on the right represents a lower level of subfolders. Click the volume in the Devices list and then click the desired folder in the first column on the right to display its contents, and so forth. (Personally, this is my favorite view — thanks, Apple! It’s efficient and fast as all get-out.) When you drill deeper, the columns shift automatically to the left. When you click an item (instead of a folder), the Finder displays a preview and a quick summary of the selected item in the rightmost column.

Each column has its own scroll bar (for those really, really big folders), and you can drag the column handle at the bottom of the separators to resize the column width to the left. When you hold down Option and drag a column handle, all the columns are adjusted simultaneously.

Flow view: When a new software feature or function turns out to be incredibly popular, a developer tries to use it wherever possible — hence, the Flow view shown in Figure 1-4, which Apple took directly from the Cover Flow view that proved so successful in iTunes. Flow view still displays the Sidebar (that strip of locations and devices at the side of each Finder window), but each document or item is showcased in a preview pane (and with an accurate thumbnail, if possible). You can resize the preview pane by dragging the three-line handle on the bottom edge of the pane. The remainder of the Finder window in Flow view works very similarly to List view, complete with the rotating triangles. However, if you like, you can click the scroll buttons or drag the scroll bar under the preview pane to move through the contents of your folder in a very classy visual display!

One of my pet peeves is cluttered disks. If you’re continually having problems locating files and folders, ask yourself, “Self, do I need to organize? Am I (insert gasp) cluttered?” If your answer is yes, take an hour and organize your files logically into new folders.

I’m talking your documents and such — not your applications, which are usually where they need to be — in your Applications folder, and easily displayed using Launchpad. Often, documents that you create end up as stragglers, usually located in the root folder of your hard drive, which sooner or later ends up looking like a biker bar after Ladies’ Night. (The same can be said of many OS X Desktops, too.)

By keeping your root folder and Desktop clean and saving your files in organized folders, you waste less time searching for files and more time actually using them. It’s also a good idea to take advantage of Mountain Lion’s All My Files feature, which I discuss in the sidebar, “It’s All My Files In One Place.” After all, organization leads to efficiency!

Doing the Toolbar Dance

You can work your customization magic on the Finder toolbar as well. In this section, I show you how to customize that strip of icons across the top of the Finder window that’s affectionately called the toolbar. Or, if you like, you’ll discover how to dismiss it entirely to gain additional real estate for the contents of your Finder window.

Hiding and showing the toolbar

You can toggle the display of the toolbar in an active Finder window in one of three ways:

Right-click the toolbar and choose Hide Toolbar.

Press +Option+T.

Choose View from the Finder menu and then choose Hide (or Show) Toolbar.

Hiding the toolbar also hides the Sidebar.

Hiding and showing the status bar

The status bar appears either at the bottom or top of the Finder window, depending on whether the toolbar has been hidden, and it displays a number of helpful informational-type tidbits about the window’s contents. Depending on what you’ve opened, the status bar can include

Statistics: See the number of items in the window and the amount of free space remaining on the volume.

A write-protect icon: This icon looks like a pencil with a line running through it, as shown in the lower left of Figure 1-5. This indicates that you don’t have write permissions for the contents of the window or the volume where the contents reside. (Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that folders at a lower level are write-protected as well.) You’ll typically see this icon when you’re viewing the contents of a CD or DVD, where everything is write-protected.

To toggle the display of the status bar, choose View from the Finder menu and then choose Show/Hide Status Bar, or press +/.

The path bar (also shown in Figure 1-5) is a close relative of the status bar. If you turn it on, the path bar also resides at the bottom of every Finder window, and it shows the system path that leads to the selected file or folder (starting with the volume where the file resides, and following each enclosing folder). For example, if you select your Home folder in the Finder window Sidebar, the path might read Hard Drive > Users > mark. I like this feature because it identifies the location of files and folders that I’m using. To view the path bar, choose View⇒Show Path Bar. (Oh, and here’s a neat trick: If you double-click at any specific point in the path, the Finder window jumps to that location!)

Giving your toolbar big tires and a loud exhaust

The default icons on the toolbar include

Back and Forward: Like with a web browser, clicking the Back button moves you to the previous window’s contents. If you use the Back button, the Forward button becomes enabled. Click this to return to the contents that you had before clicking the Back button.

View icon buttons: Click these to choose from the four view modes (Icon, List, Column, or Flow).

Pssst. Selecting a folder and pressing the spacebar displays a summary of its size and last modification date. Pass it on.

Action: Open this pop-up menu to display context-sensitive commands for the selected items. In plain English, you’ll see the commands that you’d see if you right-clicked the selection.

Arrange: The items on this pop-up menu allow you to sort the items in the Finder window by a number of different criteria, including everything from the file name to the size and the date it was last opened or modified.

Share: Open this pop-up menu to quickly send the selected items to a number of friendly destinations, like Email (which creates a new Mail message with the items already attached) and Message (which sends the items to a buddy within the Messages application). Depending on the items you select and the available network connections you’re using, you can also send items across an AirDrop connection or post them to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or Vimeo. (See Book VI, Chapter 2 and also Book II, Chapter 6 for more on AirDrop.)

Search: Okay, I know it’s not technically an icon, but the Search box is a member of the default toolbar family nonetheless. You can search for a file or folder using this box. More on this in the upcoming section, “Searching for Files from the Toolbar.”

But, as one of my favorite bumper stickers so invitingly asks, “Why be normal?” Adding or deleting items from the toolbar is a great way to customize OS X. Follow these steps:

1. From the active Finder window menu, choose View⇒Customize Toolbar to display the sheet that you see in Figure 1-6.

Along with controls such as Back, Forward, and View, you find a number of system functions (such as Eject and Burn) and features you’d normally see on a contextual (right-click) menu (such as Get Info, Delete, and Quick Look).

2. Add items to the toolbar by dragging them from the Customize Toolbar dialog up to the toolbar at the top of the window.

To add an item between existing buttons, drop it between the buttons, and they obligingly move aside. If you get exuberant about your toolbar and you add more icons than it can hold, a double-right arrow appears at the right side of the toolbar. A click of the arrow displays a pop-up menu with the icons that won’t fit.

In fact, using the Customize Toolbar dialog isn’t necessary for some toolbar modifications: You can also drag files, folders, and disk volumes directly from the Desktop or other Finder windows and add them to your toolbar at any time. To remove a file, folder, or disk volume from the toolbar, right-click the icon on the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar, and then drag the icon off the toolbar. Watch it vanish like a CEO’s ethics.

3. Customize to your heart’s content:

• To remove an item from the toolbar: Drag it off to the center of the window, amongst the other icons.

• To swap item positions: Just click an item, drag it to its new spot, and then release the mouse button.

• To choose the default toolbar configuration or to start over: Drag the default bar at the bottom of the dialog to the toolbar at the top.

This is the toolbar equivalent of tapping your ruby slippers together three times and repeating, “There’s no place like home.”

• To toggle between displaying the icons with accompanying text (the default), the icon only, or a text button only: Open the Show pop-up menu at the bottom of the Customize Toolbar dialog and make your decision there.

You can also right-click the toolbar and make the same changes.

4. After you arrange your toolbar as you like, click the Done button.

If you don’t want to customize the toolbar using the procedure I just explained, you can also hold down and drag any item off the toolbar at any time, or hold down and drag toolbar items to reorder them.

You can always drag a file or folder into the Sidebar column at the left of the Finder window.

Searching for Files from the Toolbar

Need to find a file fast? The default toolbar has just what you need: the Search field, which you can use to perform a Spotlight search for a string of text within your files (including both filenames and contents). To locate a file with the Search field, follow these steps:

1. Click in the Search box on the toolbar and type the text that you want to find.

Look for the text box on the right with the magnifying glass. (The folks at Apple are really, really into Sherlock Holmes . . . so am I!) If you need to clear the field and start over again, click the circular X button, which appears only when text is in the Search field.

Hey, who needs to press Return? The Finder immediately displays the files with names (or contents) that include the text, as shown in Figure 1-7. Depending on what you enter, you may also see a pop-up menu option to display only those files with names that contain the text you specified, or even specific file types that are related to the search text.

2. To display the location of a file, click it once. To launch it, double-click the entry.

Files can also be moved or copied from the Search results list with the standard drag and Option+drag methods.

3. To perform a new search, click the circular X button and type new text in the Search field.

To return to your original location in the Finder window, click the Back button on the toolbar.

Searching for Files from the Find Dialog

Although the Search box on the toolbar is all you usually need to find most files and folders, sometimes you need a little more flexibility and power to locate what you need on your system. To do so, add the Find controls, which you can use to create custom searches with more complex criteria. To locate a file by using the Find controls, follow these steps:

1. With the Finder active, display the Find controls by pressing +F (or choose Finder⇒File⇒Find).

OS X displays the controls that you see in Figure 1-8.

2. Click the buttons at the top of the list to specify where you want to search.

You can choose This Mac (your entire system, including network volumes) or a local volume.

3. After you decide where to search, set the criteria of what to search for.

• A specific filename: Open the first pop-up menu in the Search Criteria strip at the top of the window and choose Name; type all or part of the filename in the Contains box.

Mountain Lion automatically begins searching as soon as you type at least one character.

After you locate the file or folder that you need, click the entry name to reveal the location of the matching file or folder in the path bar at the bottom of the window. You can also double-click it to launch (or display) it.

• A text string within the document itself: Open the first pop-up menu in a row, choose Contents, and then type the string to match in the box.

The text must appear just as you type it, so restrict what you’re searching for to a minimum of words that you’re fairly sure will cause a match. (Content searching is not case-sensitive, though.) Content searching works only when you’ve generated an index, which I explain later in this section, and only when Spotlight recognizes the file type.

• Additional search criteria lines: Click the plus sign button next to the last criterion line.

You can limit your results based on all sorts of rules, including the date that the file or folder was last modified, when it was created, the file type, the size, the extension, or whether the file or folder is marked visible or hidden (such as a system file).

You can also remove a search criterion line by clicking the minus sign button.

4. (Optional) To save the search criteria that you selected, click Save.

This creates a smart folder, which (you’re gonna love this) Mountain Lion automatically updates (in real time) to contain whatever items match the criteria you saved! You can specify the location for your smart folder, and you can choose to add it to your Finder sidebar for the ultimate convenience. Sweet.

5. When you’re done canvassing your computer, click the Back button in the Find dialog to return to the Finder.

Configuring the View Options

As I discuss at the beginning of the chapter, you have a lot of control over how OS X presents files and folders in the Finder. In this section, I cover how you can make further adjustments to the view from your windows. (Pardon me for the ghastly cliché posing as a pun.)

Setting Icon view options

First, allow me to provide a little detail on housekeeping in the Big X. After a few hours of work, a Finder window in Icon mode can look something like a teenager’s room: stuff strewn all over the place, as I demonstrate with my Applications folder in Figure 1-9. To restore order to your Desktop, right-click in any open area of the active window, choose Clean Up By⇒Name. This command snaps the icons to an invisible grid so that they’re aligned and sorted by name, as shown in Figure 1-10.

After things are in alignment, work with the icon view options. (Naturally, you’ll want the active Finder window in Icon view first, so choose View⇒As Icons or press +1.) From the Finder menu, choose View⇒Show View Options or press that swingin’ +J shortcut to display the View Options dialog that you see in Figure 1-11. (You might have noticed that the window name also appears as the title of the View Options dialog.) Remember that these are the options available for Icon view; I discuss the options for List, Column, and Cover Flow view later in this chapter.

Of course, OS X remembers the changes that you make within the View Options dialog, no matter which view mode you’re configuring. Now, the changes that you can make from this dialog include

Always Open in Icon View: Each Finder window that you open automatically uses Icon view. If this check box is deselected, the new window uses the last view mode you used.

Browse in Icon View: Mountain Lion uses the current folder’s view settings as you browse through subfolders (no matter what the view settings are for those subfolders).

Arrange By: Automatically separate items within a window with dividers, sorted by one of the following criteria from its pop-up menu: by name, kind (item type), application (the default application that opens each file or file type), date last opened, date added, date modified, date created, size, or the icon label you assigned.

Sort By: If the Arrange By pop-up menu is set to None, you can open this pop-up menu and automatically align icons to a grid within the window, just as if you had used the Clean Up menu command. You can also sort the display of icons in a window by choosing one of the following criteria: by name, kind (item type), application (the default application that opens each file type), date last opened, date added, date modified, date created, size, or icon label.

Icon Size: Click and drag this slider to shrink or expand the icons within the window. The icon size is displayed in pixels above the slider. (Remember, however, that Mountain Lion offers an icon resizing slider at the right side of the status bar of any Finder window in Icon view mode; it’s much easier and more convenient just to drag the slider to expand or reduce the size of icons in a window.)

Grid Spacing: Click and drag this slider to shrink or expand the size of the grid used to align icons within the window. The larger the grid, the more white space between icons.

Text Size: Click the up and down arrows to the right of this pop-up menu to choose the font size (in points) for icon labels.

Label Position: Select either the Bottom (default) or the Right radio button to choose between displaying the text under your Desktop icons or to the right of the icons.

Show Item Info: OS X displays the number of items within each folder in the window.

Show Icon Preview: The Finder displays icons for image files using a miniature of the actual picture. This is a cool feature for those with digital cameras; however, this does take extra processing time because OS X has to load each image file and shrink it down to create the icon.

Background: Select one of three radio buttons here:

• White: This is the default.

• Color: Click a color choice from the color block that appears if you make this selection.

• Picture: Select this radio button and then click the Select button to display a standard Open dialog. Navigate to the location where the desired image is stored, click it once to select it, and then click Open.

Use as Defaults: When you first open the View Options dialog, the changes you’re making apply only to the Finder window that opens when you open the selected item — in other words, the item that appears in the window’s title bar, such as a folder or drive.

For example, any changes made to the settings in Figure 1-11 will affect only my Applications folder because it was the active Finder window when I pressed +J. However, you can decide to apply the changes that you make to all Finder windows that you view in your current mode. Simply click the Use as Defaults button.

After all your changes are made and you’re ready to return to work, click the dialog’s Close button to save your settings.

Setting List view options

If you’re viewing the active window in List view, choose View⇒Show View Options to display the View Options dialog that you see in Figure 1-12.

Like in Icon view, changes you make in this dialog typically apply only to this window, but you can click the Use as Defaults button to assign these settings to all windows that you view in List mode. The other List view settings include

Always Open in List View: Mountain Lion will open all Finder windows in List view. If deselected, new windows use the last view mode you used.

Browse in List View: Mountain Lion uses the current folder’s view settings as you browse through any subordinate folders, no matter what the view settings are for those subfolders.

Arrange By: Automatically separate items within the window with dividers, sorted by one of the following criteria from its pop-up menu: by name, kind (item type), application (the default application that opens each file type), date last opened, date added, date modified, date created, size, or the icon label you assigned.

Sort By: If the Arrange By pop-up menu is set to None, open this pop-up menu to automatically sort the display of icons in a window by choosing one of the following criteria: by name, kind (item type), application (the default application that opens each file type), date last opened, date added, date modified, date created, size, or icon label.

Icon Size: You can choose between two icon sizes.

Text Size: Click the up and down arrows to the right of the Text Size pop-up menu to choose the font size (in points) for icon labels.

Show Columns: Select the check boxes under this heading to display additional columns in list view, including the date that the item was modified, the creation date, the date the file was last opened, the date the file was added to your system, the size, the item type, the version (supplied by most applications), the label color, and any comments you added in the Info dialog for that item. (In my opinion, the more columns you add, the more unwieldy the Finder gets, so I advise disabling the display of columns that you won’t use.)

Use Relative Dates: Display modification dates and creation dates with relative terms, such as Today or Yesterday. If this freaks you out, deselect this check box to force all dates to act like adults.

Calculate All Sizes: Have OS X display the actual sizes of folders, including all the files and subfolders they contain. (Handy for figuring out where all your disk space went, no?) Note: Using this option takes processing time, so I recommend not using it unless you really need to see the size.

Show Icon Preview: Display preview icons for image files. Again, this takes extra processing time, and the image preview icons are pretty doggone small in list view, so this feature may be of limited value to you.

To save your settings, click the dialog’s Close button (or press +J).

Setting Column view options

To make changes to view options in any Finder window displaying items in Column view mode, choose View⇒Show View Options to display the View Options dialog that you see in Figure 1-13.

Any changes that you make to this dialog are always reflected in every Column view:

Always Open in Column View: All Finder windows open in Column view. If deselected, new windows use the last view mode you used.

Browse in Column View: Mountain Lion uses the current folder’s view settings as you browse through subfolders, no matter what the view settings are for those subfolders.

Arrange By: Automatically separate items, sorted by one of the following criteria from its pop-up menu: by name, kind (item type), application (the default application that opens each file type), date last opened, date added, date modified, date created, size, or the icon label you assigned.

Sort By: If the Arrange By pop-up menu is set to None, open this pop-up menu to automatically sort the display of icons in a window by choosing one of the following criteria: by name, kind (item type), application (the default application that opens each file type), date last opened, date added, date modified, date created, size, or icon label.

Text Size: Open this pop-up menu to choose the font size (in points) for icon labels.

Show Icons: Display icons in the columns. If this option is deselected, the icons don’t appear, and you’ll gain a little space.

Show Icon Preview: Mountain Lion displays preview icons for image files — taking a little extra time to perform this service, naturally. As you find out in the next Bullet1, Column view mode can be set to automatically display a preview thumbnail in the last column when you click an image or video file, and even some documents to boot. So, the usefulness of tiny icon previews in Column view mode may be limited for you.

Show Preview Column: Clicking a file in Column view mode displays a thumbnail (reduced image) and preview information in the right-most column, as shown in Figure 1-14.

If you store a slew of smaller QuickTime movies and digital images on your drive, the Preview column is great. (You can even play a QuickTime movie from the Preview column.) Of course, longer movies and larger photos take more time to load — and even longer if they’re being read from optical media or over the network!

Click the dialog’s Close button to save your settings and return to the Finder.

Setting Cover Flow view options

The view options for Cover Flow view are the same as those for List view that I cover earlier in this section, except for the Always Open in Cover Flow check box. Enabling this check box opens all new Finder windows in Cover Flow view. (If deselected, new windows use the last view mode you used.)

Setting Finder Preferences

Finally, you can change a number of settings to customize the Finder itself. From the Finder menu, click Finder and choose the Preferences menu item to display the Finder Preferences dialog that you see in Figure 1-15.

In the General section, the preference settings include

Show These Items on the Desktop: Display your internal hard disks, external hard drives, removable volumes (including CDs, DVDs, and iPods), and connected network servers.

New Finder Windows Show: Specify where a new Finder window should open. By default, a new window displays the contents of the All My Files location.

Always Open Folders in a New Window: When this check box is selected, double-clicking a folder opens it in a new Finder window, as did earlier versions of Mac OS. (If deselected, the contents of the folder appear in the same Finder window, which makes it easier to focus on just the folder you need at the moment.)

Spring-Loaded Folders and Windows: It sounds a little wacky, but using this feature can definitely speed up file copying! If this check box is selected, you can drag an item on top of a folder — without releasing the mouse button — and after a preset time (controlled by the Delay slider), a spring-loaded window appears to show you the folder’s contents. At that point, you can either release the mouse button to drop the file inside the folder (upon which the window disappears), or you can drag the icon on top of another subfolder to spring it forth and drill even deeper.

The Labels preference pane is simple. Just click next to each label color to type your own text for that label. (I gotta recommend red for deadlines and green for contracts . . . call me sentimental.)

From the Sidebar preferences pane, you can choose which default items should appear in the Finder window Sidebar column. Your choices include locations (such as your Home and Applications folders), network servers, removable media, the Desktop itself, and — naturally — your hard drives. To add a default item to the Sidebar column, click the corresponding check box to select it, or deselect the check box to banish that item forthwith.

The Advanced preference settings include

Show All Filename Extensions: The Finder displays the file extensions at the end of filenames. This comes in handy for some applications, where everything from a document to a preference file to the application itself all share the same icon. However, I usually find extensions distasteful and leave things set with the default of extensions off. (However, folks working with older Word files, which have the DOC extension instead of the newer DOCX extension, really appreciate this feature.)

Show Warning before Changing an Extension: Also on by default, this setting forces Mountain Lion to display a confirmation dialog before allowing you to change the extension on a filename. Why? Well, changing an extension frequently results in a “broken” file association, so the file’s corresponding application may not launch automatically any longer when you double-click the item. Double-clicking a Word document, for example, might not launch Word automatically as it used to do. If you show file extensions and you often change them, click this check box to disable the warning.

Show Warning before Emptying the Trash: By default, this check box is selected, and OS X displays a confirmation dialog before allowing you to — in the words of OS X patrons around the world — toss the Bit Bucket. If you’re interested in speed and trust your judgment (and your mouse finger), you can disable this setting.

Empty Trash Securely: If you’d prefer to use the more secure method of emptying your Trash — where deleted items are far harder for anyone to recover — select this check box.

When Performing a Search: Open this pop-up menu to specify whether the text you enter in the Finder window Search box should match everything on your Mac or whether the search should be limited to the current folder only. Choose Use the Previous Search Scope to use the scope setting you used during your last search.

After you make the desired changes to the Finder Preferences, click the dialog’s Close button to save your settings and return to the Finder.