TUAW Tip: Customize the Finder's toolbar, too
Dave Caolo showed you how to take control of the Finder's sidebar a couple weeks back. Today, I wanted to shed the same light on the Finder's toolbar, as you can customize it and add some tools not found in a default Mac OS X installation.
The first thing I like to do is add 'other' kinds of folders (and files) up there, such as my Library, that I don't necessarily want in my sidebar. To do this, you can drag a file or folder up next to the buttons in the Finder, and wait a second - you won't receive instantaneous feedback like you do when adding something to the sidebar. After a second or so, the Finder's search box will move over farther to the right (like when you add something to the Dock), signifying that you can now add that item to the toolbar.
You can also add a few more tools to the Finder toolbar by right-clicking on it (just like many other application windows) and choosing "Customize Toolbar." You will be presented with a whole set of handy buttons and actions you can drag and drop to add such as eject, get info, connect to server, burn and more. Even though we covered how to get a file or folder's path by command-clicking on a window's title bar icon, I also like to add the Path button to the Finder's toolbar with this trick for one more level of convenience.
Since I'm willing to bet that I haven't covered all the Finder toolbar tricks, feel free to share yours in the comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Oliver said 4:15PM on 2-20-2006
I wish there was a way to turn the toolbar off completely, but still have the sidebar. I've tried to remove all the items from the toolbar in the past, but the next time i log in it reverted back. So now I set it to display text only and have removed everything except 'path'.
Finger's crossed the next release of OS X will bring a new and much improved Finder so this will no longer be an issue.
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JJ said 4:48PM on 2-20-2006
Indeed this is really nice, I'm working with this already a few month and I've dropped all my favourite and most used aplictions in the 'finders toobar' and it's realy handy (better then the doc) especially with large screens/high resllotions :-P
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fra said 4:54PM on 2-20-2006
Wow, didn't know about this!
Thanks!
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icerabbit said 5:46PM on 2-20-2006
And that is how 2 years ago, unbeknownst to me I once lost close to 20 GBs of highly important data on an XP share. Drag & drop the folder to the toolbar. Only OS X dropped it somewhere in the open Finder window. Create another shortcut. This time it works fine. Remove erroneous shortcut => Instant delete of all the data in that folder on the XP share. :/
I haven't dare to try it since. Nor do I know if Tiger for instance has safeguards against this. Anyway, just a word of caution using this with networked drives.
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Michael said 6:05PM on 2-20-2006
Very cool tip.
Gives me another option for shortcuts so my sidebar doesn't become overloaded.
Thanks!
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Jon Baer said 7:54PM on 2-20-2006
This seems as if it would be a great place to place an Automator script but does not seem to work :- Or does it?
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Jonathan Horak said 8:55PM on 2-20-2006
Oliver, click the toolbar control. More info here:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGWindows/chapter_17_section_3.html
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ditters von dittersdork said 9:15PM on 2-20-2006
wow, this changes everything!
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Joe Weaks said 10:32PM on 2-20-2006
This tip is rather incomplete without emphasizing that the real boon to customizing the Finder toolbar is to place apps and droplets that are convenient for dropping documents onto. Keep text editors up there, and most importantly... applescript droplets.
I live by a little script in my Finder toolbar that with one drag and drop sends the file via ftp to my server space. You could put backup scripts, etc. in the toolbar.
For an example of Applescript sample code for instantly ftp'ing a file, like here: http://danshockley.com/codebits.php
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Chris said 11:15AM on 2-21-2006
Holy Crap!!!
I dragged my Library folder up to the toolbar, then ran OnyX, and after restart everything is mashed - desktop picture gone, can't connect to the wireless router, desktop icons all over the place, half the Dock is showing question marks (where my 3rd party app icons used to be...)
I am posting this from another machine and doing some deep breathing exercises to try to stop the panic...
PLEASE HELP!!!
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