Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let
me show you how to navigate to different folders in the Finder.
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 900 supporters.
Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign.
Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So when you're in a Finder window there are many ways to navigate around
into folders that are in the current folder you are reviewing, up to the Enclosing folder, or
sideways to other folders in the same folder you are at now. So, for instance, here I'm using Icon
View. I'm looking at a folder called Example Files. I've got several files in there and a
couple of folders. So if I want to navigate down into one of these folders I could simply double
click it. You could see how now I've moved down a level into the Some Files folder but I could not
longer see what's in the original file, Example Files. In order to get there I would need to go
back up. There are several different ways to go back up. One is you can hold the Command key down
and click on the name at the top, in the Title Bar, and you could see the full hierarchy of all
the folders. Here I am in Some Files, which is inside the folder Example Files, which is inside
the Documents Folder which is inside iCloud Drive. I can move up to anyone of these by simply
selecting it and now you can see I've moved up to that level. Another way to do it is to go to View
and then turn on the Path Bar. When you do that at the bottom you'll see the path to where you
are. So if I go back down into Some Files here you could see iCloud Drive, Documents, Example Files,
Some Files. If I want to go backup to Example Files I could simply double click on Example Files
there and I'll go to that level. There's also a way to simply go up one level. If you look in
the Go Menu it's called the Enclosing Folder. The keyboard shortcut is simply Common up arrow. So
let's use the keyboard shortcut and you could see I can go from Example Files up to Documents.
Now there's really no way to go sideways to an adjacent folder. For instance I have More Files
and Some Files. If I go to Some Files the only way for me to get to the other folder is to go
up and then go down into the this one. However, if we switched to another view, let's say Column
View, then things are a little different. So here you could see in the left column at this level
I'm in my Documents folder. Then at this level I have the files that are inside Example Files.
If I wanted to look to see what's inside the Some Files folder I could click that and you could see
I get another column showing me what's in there. Now in Column View it's pretty easy to see how
you can move up because you can simply click on an item here to the left. To move down all you need
to do is click the folders. So I can for instance click Project Alpha here to go into that folder.
You could see how easy it is to move into adjacent folders. Go sideways. So if I
wanted to go from Project Alpha to Example Files it's easy to do that in Column View.
Note that if I wanted to move up beyond the level that I started at, the left most column,
I have to resort to the same techniques that I would use in iCloud View. I can Command click here
and move up. I can use the Path Bar at the bottom or I can use Go, Enclosing Folder or Command Up to
go up a level. But wherever I start I can easily go down and then back up just by clicking on the
folders that I see. You can use the arrow keys for this as well. So notice Example Files is selected.
I can up and down and when I am over a folder like that Example Files I can go to the right
and it moves the selection into that column. Then I can go down into another folder
to get there. I can move to the left with the left arrow to go up a level.
Now another option is List View. When you go into List View then you only see one level at
a time or at least that's what it looks like. Here I'm looking at my Example Files folder.
I see all the files in there. Kind of similar to Icon View. Except next to each folder I've
got this little arrow here that I can click and it will reveal the items inside of that folder.
So to go down I can simply reveal what's there and I still see everything at the current level,
Example Files, in addition to everything one level down inside of Some Files. To go Up I
can use the same three methods either here or here or Command Up Arrow and I can see I'm at
the Documents folder level. Let's switch that to List View as well. Notice that I can not only go
down one level like that but actually two. So I see now everything in my Documents folder,
everything in Example Files, and everything in Some Files all in one list. Not only that,
but I can see files that are in adjacent folders at the same time. So under My Pictures I can
reveal that and I can see in this list everything in My Pictures at the same time I'm seeing
everything in Example Files and Some Files. You can use the arrow keys to manipulate this as well.
I can go up and down with the up and down arrow keys. If I'm over a folder that's open
I can use the left arrow to close it and the right arrow to open it.
So if you have to navigate around a lot in the Finder
then using Column View or List View are probably your best options. Each have their strengths.
Column View is a very clean look at your files. You can focus in on a single folder
and everything above it and it's easy to move to adjacent folders to see what's in those. So
if you need to, say, move a file from one folder to another I could look at Example Files here,
grab a file from that and drag it into an adjacent folder very easily. Something I couldn't really do
in Icon View. List View is a much more cluttered view of everything. You're going to see all the
information in these columns. But it does allow you to see the contents of adjacent
folders at the same time and even several levels deep inside of folders all while looking at
the contents of the folders above that. So it's the most comprehensive view although if
you have a lot of folders open it can get really confusing as to what it is you're looking at.
Now there's one more way to actually navigate up that I haven't shown you.
That's to customize the Tool Bar here. I'm going to go to View, Customize Tool
Bar. One of the options here is to add a Path button. So let's go ahead and add that in here.
Now the Path Button gives you a list of all the folders above this one. It's the same list you
get when Command click on the Title. So it's kind of unnecessary to add it but it is nice to be able
to just click and not have to hold a modifier key to see all the folders above it and jump to one.
So, so far I've showed you how to go down into a subfolder, how to up to the Enclosing Folder,
or how to go sideways to an adjacent folder at the same level. But there are other ways to
navigate around in the Finder. For instance, you can use the Go Menu here and use Go To
Folder or Shift Command G and then type a path to someplace. Now you can use the tilde character,
which is shift and the key to the left of the one on your US keyboards,
and then slash and then start typing the path. Like ~/documents and use that for Go
and you jump right there. Now another way to navigate is to use the back button here
which works just like the back button in the browser. It won't necessarily go up a level but it
will take you to the previous folder. So if I go into Example Files and then Some Files I could go
back various different levels. But if I use a way to jump to another location, like Some Files here,
I could use back to go right to Documents because that's what I was previously looking at.
Another way to navigate is to use Go and then there's Recent Folders. It will show you
recent locations you've been to and you could jump to one of those although that will usually
open up a new Finder window. Now if there's a location that you commonly go to, like maybe
the Some Files folder, you could simply drag and add it to the left sidebar under Favorites here.
So I'm going to add it here to the bottom. Now you can click that anytime you want to go
to that location. You can also drag it into the Tool Bar here by holding the Command key down
and dragging it and placing it in here. But you have very limited space
in the Tool Bar. A lot more space here in Favorites as this will scroll.
But save that technique and only use it for a select few folders that you access all the time.
Note that this works in File Open and File Save dialogues as well. So here I am in Pages
and going to open a new file. You could see it looks like a little Finder window here.
I can switch between the different views, like List View and Column, and I could use
the same techniques to look inside different folders and navigate around really easily
inside of this little window for opening files just like a Finder window. It even shows you the
Favorites. So if you've added something here like I've added Some Files then I could jump
right to that. I can even use Shift Command G to go to a location. Command up arrow works as well
to go up and you could use this menu right here to jump up several different levels.
So hopefully you've learned a few new tricks here
even if before you knew the basics of how to navigate around in the Finder.