Filed under: Mac 101
Mac 101: Customize your application toolbars

When you do this, you are presented with a dialog box that "rolls down" to display all of the items that you can add. Just drag the ones you want to the toolbar. If you find you don't want a certain toolbar item, just open the customize panel again and drag the item off the menu bar.
For more tips and tricks like these, visit the Mac 101 section on TUAW.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
shaun said 8:13AM on 5-23-2008
You can also command+option+click on the little lozenge that some application windows have in their top right corner
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Rhywun said 8:41AM on 5-23-2008
Huh, I didn't know that one. Now someone tell Firefox about that.
Cory Bohon said 8:57AM on 5-23-2008
You can do this in Firefox, you just have to right-click where the there is a blank space in the toolbar (for instance, the stop button or where the loading icon is over to the far right).
Rhywun said 7:02PM on 5-23-2008
I was talking about the lozenge trick. It doesn't work in Firefox - hell this trick is so obscure, they probably didn't know about it either.
Also, Command-Click seems to cycle through the all the icon & text size options.
Karsten said 9:00AM on 5-23-2008
You can also cmd-drag things around in the toolbar without opening the panel... dragging around also means you can drag an item out of the toolbar to remove it
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shaun said 9:14AM on 5-23-2008
I love the puff of smoke that comes when you do that!
william said 9:28AM on 5-23-2008
Can you do this on a laptop? trackpad fan
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Josh said 10:58AM on 5-23-2008
Control+Click is the same as right click. Also, you can go into System Prefs > Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad Tab. Check "Tap trackpad with two fingers for secondary click". All you have to do then is use two fingers to tap the trackpad and you have a right click
LuminousNerd said 9:47AM on 5-23-2008
This isn't even close to straightforward in windows... it's a complicated disaster, it never does what you tell it to, sometimes things disappear and you can't get them back for a few days, it's glitchy....you can't get anything to go in the right place, you drop it one place and it just reappears somewhere else!
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Brandon Martinez said 10:08AM on 5-23-2008
Tell me about it; I can't stand customizing the toolbar in Windows. Sadly, I always had to - the default toolbar was never enough.
Rhywun said 7:09PM on 5-23-2008
I like the Windows version - at least the one in Office and Visual Studio and some others. I've gotten used to it over the years. You can put any command in the toolbar, not just a small subset of commands. At work I actually set up my toolbars to be more Mac-like: fewer buttons but bigger (with text). BUT there's a huge drawback. The settings are buried somewhere in the Registry and I've never bothered to figure out where. And then my machine craps out and gets replaced and I have to do the settings all over again... Or stick with the default toolbars, which I LOATHE. All those tiny little buttons for functions I never use.
ChrisM said 12:25PM on 5-23-2008
Does anyone know how to get the little bar on the bottom that shows you where a link goes to when you hover over one? For the most part, its never there for me, then sometimes when I open a link in a new window, the new window has the bar across the bottom. (I'd like to know this for both the Mac OSX and Windows XP versions)
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Richard said 3:54PM on 5-23-2008
View> Show Status Bar
Simpleton said 12:40PM on 5-23-2008
For added customization to your Finder toolbar, open your Apps folder in one Finder window, then open another Finder window and go to "Customize Toolbar..." This gives you the ability drag apps from the 1st window into the Finder window you are customizing. (It works for files too.)
This can be a huge step forward in productivity once you know how to do it! It effectively adds a "second dock" that is always available in Finder windows... and for certain tasks this set up works much better than the dock.
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Simpleton said 2:01PM on 5-23-2008
If that's not clear...
I'm saying you can actually add any file or folder to your Finder toolbar; not just the group of items that pop up when you are "customizing".
Josh said 4:52PM on 5-23-2008
It is so much easier to do a CTRL+Space and type in the name of the app than move your trackpad or mouse up to the toolbar to click something, though. At least for me, it is.
Josh said 4:54PM on 5-23-2008
Eh... that'd be CMD+Space. Was telling another shortcut to someone in Adium that used CTRL. Sorry.
pv said 3:20PM on 5-23-2008
I've wanted to add commands like "select all" to the toolbar, but haven't been able to figure out how. Any siggestions for commands that aren't in the "available" group in the pop up tray?
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Rhywun said 7:10PM on 5-23-2008
AppleScript? I haven't tried it but that's probably the only way.
Rhywun said 7:11PM on 5-23-2008
Never mind - if you're talking about Firefox, I don't think it's scriptable.