Master the macOS Finder with these 10 essential tips, tricks, and tweaks

This is an explanation of terminology. Before you can master the Finder, it helps to understand the difference when, say, you’re looking up support documents on Apple.com or reading a how-to on Macworld.

You hear people refer to the Desktop on the Mac. The Desktop and the Finder are two parts of a whole. The Finder is actually an app that runs all the time. The Desktop is a component of the Finder; to paraphrase Apple, the Desktop is the space between the menu bar at the top, and the Dock at the bottom (or the bottom of the screen, if your Dock is not located there or is hiding). If you click on the Desktop, notice that the app you end up in is the Finder. So, if you’re working with someone on a Mac and you’re told to go to the Desktop or Finder, they’re usually referring to the same thing.

Now, the Finder and Desktop differ in functionality. You can place files on the Desktop, and you can set the Finder to display icons so you can access storage devices, servers, and more. The Finder itself offers other functions, such as windows to navigate and manage files, Quick Look (select a file and then press the spacebar to see a preview of it), syncing with an iPhone, and more.

Because a lot of users don’t think of the Finder as an app, they don’t realize that the Finder has Settings. When in the Finder, click on Finder in the menu bar, and you’ll find Settings. This is where you can make the most adjustments to customize the Finder to your preferences. As you can see above, I very rarely use Tags, Music, or Movies, so I have unchecked them to hide them in the Sidebar section.

Clicking on the Finder icon in the Dock brings the Finder to the forefront and opens the Finder Window. However, if you right-click (or Control+click, or do a two-fingered click on a Magic Trackpad), you’ll find more options available to help navigate your Mac. It’s a useful tool for those times when the Desktop clutter is a total mess.

When right-clicking a file in the Finder, the contextual menu that appears offers several options for you. One of them is Quick Actions, which are tasks you can do based on the file type. For example, Quick Actions for a graphic file may have options for Rotate Left, Covert Image, Remove Background, and more, without the need of opening an app.

Not every file type has Quick Actions available. There isn’t a place like the App Store where you can get more Quick Actions. These are provided by the apps you install on your Mac. For example, if you install Pixelmator Pro, it offers its own Remove Background Quick Action.

You can turn on/off Quick Action functions in System Settings > General; scroll down to the Extensions section, find the Finder section, and click its “i” icon. A list of Quick Actions will appear with switches to turn them on/off.

About two years ago, Apple introduced macOS Desktop widgets. This is a feature brought over from iOS and it allows you to put app widgets that stay on your Desktop for quick access. For example, the Calendar widget shows your daily schedule without needing to open the Calendar app, which you can open by clicking the widget.

Widgets that are made for iOS are brought over the macOS, so the available widgets you have are based on what iPhone and iPad apps you have. You can see a list of widgets by right-clicking any space on the Desktop and selecting Edit Widgets in the contextual menu. They can live on your Desktop or in the notification sidebar.

What would happen to our productivity if cut/copy and paste disappeared? It’s a standard function on any computing device, but have you ever wondered what exactly is currently in the clipboard?

You can find out in the Finder. Go to Edit > Show Clipboard, and a window pops up to display the clipboard contents. Most of the time, you can see what’s in there–if it’s text, you’ll see it, if it’s an image, it’s there. Some items don’t appear, for example, when I copy a video clip in iMovie, the Clipboard is blank and the identifier at the bottom says Clipboard contents: unknown. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing in the Clipboard, it just means it’s not being displayed.

This probably isn’t a feature you’ll use often, but it might be a good idea to check your Clipboard to make sure any private information isn’t in there. However, there isn’t an easy way to clear the clipboard. You can copy blank space from a document, and it will look like there’s nothing in your Clipboard, or copy something of no value.

You can erase the Clipboard in the Terminal by entering pbcopy < /dev/null and then pressing Return. Also, when you restart your Mac, the Clipboard gets wiped out every time. Third-party Clipboard utilities allow you to manage Clipboard contents and also have other features like multiple clipboards and the ability to save clipboards after the Mac restarts.

In Finder Windows, the Sidebar lists areas where you will access files. By default, they’re listed alphabetically within their sections, but you can rearrange them by clicking and dragging. You can even move the sections; if you want to move, say, the iCloud section to the bottom, just click the iCloud header and drag it to the bottom.

You can determine what items appear in the Finder Settings under Sidebar. For example, if you don’t want AirDrop in the list, you can go into Settings and uncheck the AirDrop box.

There’s a little-used feature in the Finder called Folder Actions Setup and what it does is that it performs actions on files within the folder. For example, you can set up a Folder so that when you place images into it, the images are automatically converted to jpegs.

To use Folder Action Setup, right-click on a folder and select Folder Action Setup from the pop-up menu. macOS includes a few actions you can use, most of them for use with images, such as format conversion, rotation, or flipping. There is one action that makes an alert appear whenever a folder has a new file added to it.

These actions are AppleScripts; a script is a method of automating a set of tasks. You can create your own scripts and use them in Folder Action Setup if the ones in macOS aren’t what you need. Check out our guide to using Folder Action Setup.

Right-click anywhere on the Desktop, and in the pop-up menu, select Import from iPhone or iPad. A pop-up appears that offers options to Take Photo, Scan Documents, or Add Sketch. Pick one and the Camera app opens for photos or scans, or a sketch app opens. Anything you create with those apps is saved to the Mac’s Desktop.