Useful Finder tips every Mac user should know

• Feb 27, 2019
• By George E. Rowe

Looking for some Finder tips to boost the productivity of using your Mac? You may spend much time in the Finder to manager and organize your files. Mastering some essential Finder tricks is a great way to make your workflow much smoother.

In this post we will share some tips and trick that every Mac users should know about the Finder. If you are an experienced Mac users, this post is not for you. But if you are new to Mac, you can find helpful tips here, like how to see hidden files in Finder.

1. Show hidden files in Finder

To show the files and folders hidden by default, you can launch the Terminal app from the /Applications Utilities folder in Finder, then type in the following command and hit Return key: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

After that, hold the Option key, right click Finder icon in Dock and choose Relaunch.

To re-hide the items, use this command:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

If you are using macOS Sierra or higher, you can use the keyboard shortcut (CMD + Shift + . ) to show the hidden files, and press once to hide them again.

2. Set a default Finder folder

How do you change the default Finder? When you open a new Finder window, it will display the Recents folder by default, and you will need to navigate to the desired folder. If you want to change to another particular folder, do the followings:

Click the Finder from the menu bar and choose Preferences
In the General tab, click to display the drop-down menu under the New Finder Windows Show heading, and choose a preferred default Finder window location

If the location is not in the list, choose the Other option and navigate to your preferred spot. Besides, you can click the Sidebar tab, and uncheck any folders under the Show these items in the sidebar heading, to hide them in the sidebar of any Finder window.

3. Force quit and relaunch Finder

You may want to relaunch Finder in some cases, such as when it becomes sluggish, after you make changes to Finder’s configuration, or if a Finder Quit Unexpectedly message displays. Unlike other apps, Finder cannot be quit from the Dock.

Here is how to force quit and relaunch Finder: (1) hold the Shift key, (2) then click the Apple icon from the menu bar,(3) Select Force Quit option and (4) choose Finder.

Soon the Finder window will reappear automatically after the force quit.

Due to space limitation, here we only introduce three Finder tips. If you want to know more, follow our site and we will add more essential Finder tricks soon.