Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you ten ways you can quickly access
and important folder on your Mac. MacMost is supported by more than 600 viewers
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So sometimes you have a folder that is the most important folder. It's got the files
in it for the project you're working on now and you're constantly accessing it from the
Finder, from different apps, in different situations. There are many ways to make this
folder more easily accessible so you can quickly get to it in different situations.
Probably the most obvious one is to use the Dock. Let's use this Project A folder as an
example. If I drag and drop that to the right side of the Dock, to the right of this last
line there, I could put a folder there and it will appear there. I can click it to quickly
see the items in it. If I Control click it I can change it from a Fan view to a Grid
view to a List view. I like the List view most of all. I can click it there and see
the files and the folders and files inside those folders as well. I could also go into
Options here and change it to display as a folder rather than a bunch of different icons.
You can always click on it and go to Open in Finder to open up that folder.
You can also easily set it to be in the Favorites in the Finder sidebar. To do that all you
need to do is drag and drop it over into the Finder sidebar. Once you put it there you
have now access to that folder by just clicking on it and it will jump to that location. But
you can also drag and drop files directly into the Finder sidebar there. If the folder
is in iCloud Drive you have the choice between putting it in Favorites or you could also
put it under iCloud here.
Now when you add something to the Finder's sidebar it also appears in another location.
That's in Open and Save Dialogues. So, for instance, let's go to TextEdit here and I
have a file I need to save. I'll go to File, Save and you could see I get kind of a mini
Finder window here including the sidebar and there is that folder since I put it under
Favorites. I can click on it and I jump easily to that location. The same thing for when
I go to Open a new file I get the Finder sidebar there and click on the folder to go right
to it.
Now you can also add folders to the Toolbar at the top. The best way to do that is to
create a new Finder window so you have two Finder windows open at the same time. I doesn't
matter what you're looking at in the second Finder window because you're just going to
use that to go to View and then Customize Toolbar. Then with the Toolbar customization
open you can then drag a folder from the other Finder window and stick it there in the Toolbar.
It appears there as a folder. I'll see it just as an icon but I can select Icon and
Text if I want to see the name as well. It will appear in all Finder windows. So I can
close this second window here and I can see it there. I can click on it to quickly jump
to that folder but I could also drag and drop into it.
Now I like to keep a nice clean desktop with no files on there. But you can put folders
there. If you move a folder to the Desktop it actually moves into the desktop folder.
Instead if you want to keep the folder where it is, in this case Project A is in the Documents
folder, I could hold the Option and Command keys both down. Notice the cursor changes
to this little curved arrow. If I drop it there what I'm doing is creating an Alias
there. Notice Project A is still in the Documents folder but I have an alias to it now in the
Desktop. I can double click on that to open up the folder and I can also drag and drop
files to it. It's also handy when you're in an app to go to File, Save and then use the
shortcut Command and D to jump to the Desktop and there you would see any aliases you have
on the Desktop as well. So you can double click on the Project A folder to go into it.
Now you can also simply make this folder your default folder for New Finder Windows. So
if I were to create a new Finder window you could see here it goes to my Home folder.
But I can go to Finder, Preferences and under General I can change New Finder Window Show
to anything I want. Right now it's set to the Home folder. I can set it to the Documents
folder, you can set it to Recents, but you could also choose Other and then from Other
I could go ahead and choose that Project A folder and now you could see New Finder Window
show Project A. So anytime I go into the Finder to New Finder Window it jumps right to Project
A.
Now it would be nice if you could customize the Go menu and add a folder or two to this
list. But you can't. However there is something called Go To Folder here. Shift Command G
is the shortcut. A lot of people like to use this when they like to type in the path to
a folder. To get to the Project A folder I could type out the path to it which should
start with tilde, which represent the Home folder, and slash documents slash Project
A. Now I hit Go and it goes to that folder. Now that's not very quick to do at all! But
the next time you use this, Shift Command G to get there, you could see it appears there
as the last one I selected. I could just hit Return for Go. So anytime I want to jump to
it I could do Shift Command G, Return and it goes there.
If you look here you'll see that there's actually a list of the five most recent folders. To
get to that list when you first open this up all you need to do is hit the down arrow
and you could go to the one that you want and then hit Return to jump to it. So I could
jump to the Documents folder like that. So even it's not the top choice there you could
still use it if it's one of the five most recent. This also works in Save and Open Dialogues.
So if I go to Save this TextEdit document I could do Shift Command G and it brings this
up. Now I can down arrow to the one I want, hit Return, and I jump to that folder.
Now you can also use Automator to create a shortcut to go to this folder. An advantage
to this is that you can set a keyboard shortcut for it. So let's go into Automator here. I'm
going to create a new QuickAction. Then the first thing I'm going to do is Get Specified
Finder Items right there. I'm going to Add this Finder location. So let's go right to
the Project A folder here and I'll Add it. You can see it shows the specified item is
Documents, Project A. Now I'm going to add Open Finder Items right there underneath it
and set it to Default Applications and since it's a folder that would be the Finder. I'm
going to set the Input to No Input and have it work in any application.
Now when I run this it'll open up a New Finder Window with Project A. Perfect. So now I can
Save this and let me just call it Go To Project A and save it out. Now I can Quit Automator
and after a few seconds, if I look under Finder Services, I'll notice it there, Go To Project
A. I can set a keyboard shortcut for this by going to System Preferences and then Keyboard
Shortcuts, Add Shortcuts and I'll hit the Plus button and I'll do a shortcut for all
applications, Go To Project A. Set a keyboard shortcut for it, let me do Shift Command Option
G, and Add it. Now when I look under Services you can see Shift Command Option G is Go To
Project A. So I can use that keyboard shortcut. The first time I do it it will ask for permission.
But you could see it opens it up. So now anywhere I am, like say I'm here in TextEdit, I can
use that keyboard shortcut and the first time I have to give permission for that app, and
it opens up that folder. Next time I do it in that app the keyboard shortcut just quickly
opens up that folder.
Now there's another way to add a keyboard shortcut to go to this folder. If you look
under Go there's a Recent Folders submenu. Now, of course, this being an important folder
it's certainly going to be in the Recent Folders list. Usually there are ten items in there
although you can customize that. Well, it's not super convenient to go to Go, Recent Folders,
and then find that folder. But since it's a menu item you can add a keyboard shortcut
just as we did before. So let's go to System Preferences, and then Keyboard, Shortcuts,
and then App Shortcuts. Let's add it for the exact name of that menu which is also the
exact name of that folder like that. Then we'll set the keyboard shortcut to something
like Control Option Command P and Add it.
Now we can look in the Go menu under Recent Folders and see the shortcut there. So as
long as this folder appears in this list that keyboard shortcut will be assigned to it.
If it drops off this list for some reason because it's not one of the ten most recent,
then you just need to use it again so it appears in the Recent's list and the keyboard shortcut
will automatically come back. So I can just do Control Option Command P and you could
see it opens up the Project A folder there without me having to create anything in Automator.
Here's one of the most interesting ways to quickly access that folder. Say you're always
using the Print command and then saving as PDF's. A lot of people do this as a regular
task constantly throughout the day, they create a PDF, Save As PDF. Then you would have to
go and choose that folder if you're saving the documents into that folder. Well, if you
look at the bottom of this menu here there's something called Edit Menu. Go to that and
you see Printing Workflows. You could hit the Plus button and you could add as a Printing
Workflow that location. So in this case I'm going to add the Project A folder. You could
just go into it or select it like that. Hit Open and you could see Project A is added
here. I'll hit OK.
Now under this PDF menu if I look here I could see Project A. What happens if I select that?
Well, it instantly saves a PDF of whatever I was trying to print. So now when I look
in Project A I could see there is the PDF version of that untitled document. That works
anywhere that you could print. For instance here I am in Mail. I could go File, Print
or Command P, and then select the Project A folder there. Now if I look there I could
see a PDF of that email message.
So the last one I want to show you involves the Spotlight Menu. This is through Command
Space and of course you can search for anything. So I could search for Project A and I'll see
it come up as a result. You could see it right there. Now this is where it's important to
have a pretty unique name for the folder. Project A I had to type out the whole name
project space A and you could see I have a lot of other folders called Project A in other
locations. But if I were to go and name this something really unique, so now I can type
Command Space and start typing the name of the folder and since it's so unique I don't
even have to get that far. Three characters is all I need and it appears. I hit Return
and now it opens up that folder. That works wherever I am. So I could be working here
in TextEdit, for instance, and I can hit Command Space, type wom, hit Return, and it will jump
to the folder in the Finder even though I was in TextEdit when I hit Command Space.
So each one of these different methods has its advantages and disadvantages. Hopefully
one or more of them is going to be useful to you if you've got a single folder that
you use all the time.