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Mac os x customize finder

You can use the option to color the background to make one or more folders more easily identifiable. If you need a bit of guidance to keep the window or desktop a bit less cluttered, you can enable snapping to the grid, or occasionally issue a cleanup command that will temporarily rearrange the icons so they line up to the invisible grid. To do this, select View, Clean Up from the Finder menu. In addition, icons give you a hint as to what is contained within each item. This is especially true if you have turned on the icon preview option mentioned above.

Window view options are set on a per folder basis, allowing each folder to have its own set of options. Use the color or background picture option in Icon view to make a folder you access often stand out from others. List View List view may be the most popular of the Finder views.

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Some people prefer Icon view; I tend to use List view a lot. To set the current Finder window to List view, select View, as List from the Finder menu, or use the Finder toolbar to select the second button it looks like a page with lines in the View group. List view can be accessed using the List view button in the toolbar, here outlined in red. List view is compact, displaying each item in the window as an entry in a list.

Modify the Finder Sidebar to Suit Your Preferences

Think of a spreadsheet with rows and columns. Actually, there are a number of column types you can have displayed in list view, which brings us to how to customize the list view. Some List view options may not be available for all folders, such as iCloud Status, which is used with the iCloud Drive folder. This column displays an iCloud status icon indicating whether the file or folder is only in iCloud and you need Internet access to see its content a cloud with an arrow pointing down ; not eligible to be stored in iCloud a cloud icon with a prohibition slash ; downloaded and up to date a cloud icon ; waiting to upload a dotted cloud ; and out of space a cloud with an exclamation point.

The iCloud status column is only available when using the iCloud storage service. Shows any comments that have been entered for the file.

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Comments can be entered by right-clicking a file, selecting Get Info, and adding text to the Comments field. Use relative dates: This allows the use of terms such as Today or Yesterday instead of actual dates in any of the date-related columns. Calculate all sizes: Forces your Mac to calculate the size of all folders and any subfolders they contain; the size is then displayed in the Size column.

How to customize the Sidebar in macOS Finder

This can take some time, so unless you have a need to know the size of all the folders, I suggest leaving this disabled. Show icon preview: List view makes use of small thumbnail icons that can be set to show a preview of the item. The Best Use for List View List view offers a lot of information about each item in a Finder window, and does so using a compact view that puts the most amount of information in as small a place as possible.

With the customization options available, you can choose which information is important to you and which can be hidden, taking up less space. List view is best when you need to sort the information in a window by any of the column heads. Simply click on a column head to sort by the column head property, such as Size or Kind.

Get more out of the Mac Finder with these easy sidebar tweaks

Sort the List view by Date Modified, and the files you most recently used will appear at the top of the window. Name required. Email required. Leave this field empty. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. How can I show a list of my photos or videos with dimensions?

I want to clean up and remove those below a certain level.

Modify the Finder Sidebar to Suit Your Preferences

If your images are located in your Pictures folder, you can add a Dimension as well as a Resolution column to the Finder. Right-click any of the columns and place a checkmark on the Dimension or Resolution items. The columns will be added at the far right of the window. You can drag them to where you wish. Thank you. I had to change the folder name for this to work. Seems odd that the name of the folder determines which attributes can show up.

The sidebar font size can be changed from the General preference pane.

There are several ways to customize the Finder toolbar and Finder sidebar. Before you start, open a Finder window by clicking the Finder icon at the left end of the Dock. Hiding the toolbar also hides the sidebar, and moves the status bar from the bottom to the top of the window. Resize the toolbar: If you see angle brackets at the right end of the toolbar, it means the window is too small to show all of the toolbar items.

Enlarge the window or click the brackets to see the rest of the items. You can drag items into and out of the toolbar, add a space between items, and choose whether to show text with the icons. Rearrange the items in the toolbar: Press and hold the Command key, then drag an item to a new location.


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Add a file or an app: Press and hold the Command key, then drag the item to the Finder toolbar until you see a green plus sign. Hide or show the sidebar: Rearrange items in the sidebar: Drag an item to a new location. Show or hide all the items in a section of the sidebar: Position the pointer over the section head until you see Hide or Show appear, then click the Hide or Show button.


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For example, to temporarily hide your Favorites, position the pointer over the Favorites heading in the sidebar and click the Hide button.