Finder Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Hidden secret apps of CoreServices

by Erica Sadun (Jan 13th, 2012)

Nestled within the bosom of your Mac's system folder lie many powerful and curious applications. Not intended for direct access, the denizens of the CoreServices directory work as clients for other OS apps such as System Preferences or Safari. There are several CoreServices apps we use often at ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me find Spotlight items in the Finder

by Erica Sadun (Oct 30th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, There's plenty I like about Lion - but lots of pointless change for the worse. Top of my hate list is that Spotlight no longer gives me the location of the items I'm searching for. Sure, the preview on cursor hover is nifty, but why oh why can't Spotlight give me (for example) the ...

Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word

by TJ Luoma (Sep 25th, 2011)

Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same ...

Daily Mac App: Go2Shell

by Samuel Gibbs (Sep 13th, 2011)

Here on the Daily Mac App we love apps that do one thing really well. Today's app is no exception. Go2Shell is a tiny little 0.3MB app available for free from the Mac App Store that has the potential to speed up your work-flow if it involves Terminal. Go2Shell simply launches a Terminal ...

Three ways to change Lion's Finder window sidebar

by Mike Schramm (Sep 9th, 2011)

It took me a little while, but I finally last weekend updated to Lion, and so far ... I think I like it. I kind of miss my old Spaces feature, and I did turn off reverse scrolling right away, but it does seem to run better than Snow Leopard, and Mission Control is pretty sweet. Another thing ...

Get back your HD info in Lion

by Michael Rose (Jul 20th, 2011)

Looking for that handy readout at the bottom of every Finder window telling you how many items are in the active folder, and how much free space is on your hard drive? In OS X 10.7 Lion, it's turned off by default (part of the cleaner, scrollbar-free new UI style). Easy enough to restore it, ...

Speed up Empty Trash

by Michael Rose (Jul 10th, 2011)

If you've got a bunch of locked files in your Trash, the 'really delete?' warnings can be a drag. You can speed up the Empty Trash process and bypass all the warnings (use with caution!) by holding down the Option key before choosing the command from the Finder menu. Notice that the ellipsis ...

Declaring love with the Mac OS X Finder

by Chris Rawson (Apr 29th, 2011)

Not only is this really cute, it made me think to myself, "Man, I wish I'd thought of that first." Sean Ohlenkamp put a folder on the desktop of his wife's Mac as the gateway to expressing his sentiments on their third wedding anniversary. The video above walks through a whimsical nest of folders ...

Ask TUAW's triumphant return from abroad

by Ask TUAW (Feb 15th, 2011)

This, my friends, is the triumphant return of Ask TUAW -- everyone's favorite Mac and iOS Q&A and advice column. Unfortunately, a giant beaver ate all of the questions from prior editions of Ask TUAW, and we need more new questions! So, here's what we need you to do: go to the comments of ...

Finder now offers to search Mac App Store for unknown file types

by TJ Luoma (Jan 7th, 2011)

If you try to open a file in the Finder and it doesn't recognize the extension, it will now offer to search the Mac App Store for applications that can open that file type. Before the Mac App Store's launch, the alert panel you see above would simply say, "There is no default application specified ...

Hacksugar: Twisting your browser

by Erica Sadun (Dec 8th, 2010)

This morning, we posted a simple little trick for slowing down OS X animations by depressing the shift key. In the comments on that post, TUAW reader Rafe H reminded me about this sweet little trick that allows you to retain a warped (but still usable) browser window in your workspace. By slowing ...

ForkLift 2, slick file management, fast file transfers

by Brett Terpstra (Nov 25th, 2010)

ForkLift 2 was officially released this week. This is the second generation of the FTP client-cum-Finder replacement, and it brings with it a veritable shipping palette full of new features. When it comes to file transfer, ForkLift 2 has just about all the bases covered: FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon ...

Mac 101: Keyboard tricks for Finder navigation

by Brett Terpstra (Oct 14th, 2010)

You may know that you can expand and collapse Finder folders in a tree view using the left and right arrow keys. But did you know that you can expand or collapse all of the root-level folders at once? It's a cool trick that can save you a lot of time when navigating your Mac's files. With the Finder ...

Mac 101: Use the keyboard to navigate a Grid from the Dock

by Matt Tinsley (Sep 23rd, 2010)

When I first got my Mac, it came with all the standard applications found in the applications folder. I used to find that opening an application from the applications Grid, on the Dock, was much easier and quicker than opening an application through the Finder. Over time, with more applications ...

No Comment: Inception explained for Mac users

by Mike Schramm (Aug 24th, 2010)

Confused by the summer's biggest blockbuster and its multiple dream levels? Wishing Christopher Nolan had used some sort of OS X-related metaphor instead? Jonah Ray's got just the graphic for you -- he created a graphic that shows just who's around on each level of the vast dreamscape in Inception, ...