Mac 101: Quickly change directory in save/open dialogs

You can even drag the icon in the title bar of some other document or whatever to the dialog. This is useful if you are working with a few files but need to save them in the same folder.

Here's an enhancement to this trick:

Wish you could use quicksilver to choose the directory to save in? You almost can!

1. Open the dialogue
2. Summon quicksilver and make it select the desired destination
3. Drag the icon into the dialogue, thus making the dialogue match quicksilver.

This method of saving things saves me amazing amounts of time every day. Now if only there was a way to just use quicksilver as my file browser...lol.

A favorite variation on this is being able to drag files/folders into the terminal.

$ cd (drag folder into terminal)


and even

$ open .

(opens a finder window in current shell directory)

Works with files too; not just directories. And you can use Expose during a drag-and-drop to make it easier to get back to the open/save dialog.

Neat trick, but really only useful if you happen to have the folder you want to use someplace in view (like the desktop) and only a mouseclick or two away, otherwise you might as well just drill down where you're looking for.

To extend on what anson said, you can press Cmd-Shift-G to get the dialog box to type in the path. This works in any finder window, unlike the / or ~ trick.

One of the confusing things for switchers? I don't think so. Before I switched to a Mac a few years back, I was pretty proficient on Windows, and I've never dragged a folder in to the Open/Save dialog. Ever. I can guarantee you that most switchers have absolutely no idea about that little trick.

In the long run it would be a lot more efficient to buy and install Default Folder. Apple should have bought this years ago and integrated it into the operating system.

Try this also: With open/save dialog open, type either / or ~ to bring up text dialog for changing directories via keyboard. Extremely useful for those who just want to keep keyboarding. Super fast way to, say, save a file to /tmp:

cmd-S / t m p enter enter