Apple has made it easy for Mac users to keep all their files and folders neatly organized. Here are a few tricks and tips that will help you to get and stay organized:
Nov 14, 2016 Congratulations on your organized Mac. If there is one thing to take away from this article, it’s to realize that people with organized Mac’s are not special. Thanks to macOS and Gemini 2, anyone can quickly and easily organize their Mac files and their digital lives. Now if only we had similar tools for our personal lives.
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Contents
- 1 How to Organize Finder
How to Organize Finder
Many of the options and functions can be accessed from the Action button (that button with the cog graphic on a Finder window toolbar). Its contents relate to whatever’s selected in the window, or if nothing is selected, the whole folder that you are viewing.
How to Move and Copy
Generally, when you drag a file or folder from one location to another in Finder, the item is moved, but this relates only to the cases when you move the item within the same hard drive. If however you drag something to a separate drive or a separate server, the item will be copied. The same happens if you drag an item into some applications.
If you drag a whole disk or if you drag a file onto a blank CD, for example, you’ll drag an alias rather than a copy. For all these cases, your mouse pointer displays a green plus sign if the item is going to be copied, or a black arrow if an alias will be created.
If you want another action to be performed, you can do the following:
- Press Option (Alt) key to drag a copy of the file. This also works for text in most applications.
- Press Option (Alt) key + Command key to drag an alias.
- Press Command key to move the item instead of copying it, or copy the item instead of creating an alias.
To duplicate file or folder: Select the file (files) or folder (folders) and press Command Key+D. A copy appears next to the original item.
Copy and Paste: It is also possible to copy and paste files and folders just as you act while working with a text in a document. To perform this operation, select the item, press Copy in the Edit menu or press Command key + C. Open the folder or drive where you want to put the item and press Paste or Command key + V.
Aliases
Files that are created only to point to another file, folder or drive, are called aliases (or shortcuts). To create an alias, select the item (file, folder or drive) and press Command key + L. You can also choose Make Alias from the File menu, or drag the file while holding down Option + Command key. When you delete an alias, you are only deleting the shortcut, so no harm is done to the original item.
Today, aliases are used much less frequently, because dropping shortcuts to the Dock and Sidebar is more convenient; still, you may like them since they give you a direct access to a file via your desktop and so on.
Labels
You can mark up your files and folders using one of six colors, which is very useful if you are working with many files. For example, you can mark all your unfinished files with a red label, and the documents you have already finished can be marked as green.
To pick a color, select the item (or various items). Then choose from the Label section of the File menu. Alternatively, right-click in the context menu.
You can change the name of the label. To do so, go to Finder’s Preferences and choose Finder’s List view. Now you can add labels as a column and see the customized names you assigned to the labels.
Tips
You can set Finder to always open folders into a new window from the General pane of Finder’s Preferences, though this does tend to make things a little cluttered as more and more windows will appear.
Explore Automator and Folder Actions if you have to perform a repetitive task with copying and moving folders.
To cancel a drag that’s in progress, press Escape. This works in most applications and not just files in Finder.
If you drag an item and hold it over the icon of a folder or drive, including those files which are located on the sidebar, the folder or drive will open up in a new window. This feature is useful as it means you can always drag files wherever you like, even without having multiple windows open: drag the item to Macintosh HD and drill down from there. Hitting space while hovering makes it open instantly.
It is possible to open a folder into a new window by holding the Command key while double-clicking it. This can be handy when moving files around.
Links
- The easiest way to recycle your old Mac: Sell your used Mac and iPhone to iGotOffer for the highest price online.
A lot of Mac users find that the desktop is a convenient place to store shortcut icons, files and folders. If you don’t keep your desktop it organized, it can get quite cluttered really fast.
Not only the cluttered desktop will look messy but also it will overwhelm you.
The purpose of this article is to teach you to make your desktop cleaner because it is important to have a clean and organized desktop:
- The messy desktop will impact your productivity negatively
- It may slow your Mac down and may cause freezing, this is because files and folders on your desktop use a lot more system resources.
See also: Screenshots Not Working On Mac, Fix
Use Stacks
You can now organize your desktop automatically with Stacks if your Mac is running macOS Mojave or later (e.g., Catalina). Stacks will organize your desktop instantly if you turn in on. Stacks put files and folders into stacks. Here is how you can turn on Stacks on your Mac:
- Go to Finder
- Click View
- Click Use Stacks
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Or alternatively, on your desktop, right-click or control-click on your desktop and then click Use Stacks.
By default, once you turn this on, you Mac will create Stacks the group files by Kind. Everything will appear on the right side of your screen. However, you can change how these groups are stacked. Here is how:
- Go to Finder and click View
- Click Group Stacks By
- There are many options, choose one.
The stacks options are:
- Kind (default option)
- Date last opened
- Date added
- Date modified
- Date created
- Tags (if you are already using tags to organize your desktop), see the next section below.
Apps To Open Files
To view files in Stacks, just click the Stack and it will expand, then double click the file to open it, when you click again, it will collapse back down.
See also: Relocated Items Folder
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Use tags
You can use tags to organize your files and folders on your Mac. There are several ways to tag a file or folder with colors or keywords. The easiest way to tag an item on your desktop, simply right-click (control-click) and find the Tags section and choose a color. Note that you can add multiple tags (colors) to any file or folder.
To remove a tag from a file or folder, again right-click (or control-click) and then click the tag that you want to remove. It will be unselected.
You can also customize your tags. You can add custom tags. Here is how you can do that:
- Go to Finder
- Click Finder (top menu bar)
- Click Preferences
- Click the Tags tab
Now you can add custom tags by clicking the plus (+) icon. Then you can drag the new tag to the favorite tags area so that you can use this new tag quickly when you want to. You can also use the minus (-) icon to remove tags. You can here edit the current tags also.
Use Finder Preferences
You may adjust your Finder preferences to organize your desktop. Go to Finder and click Finder > Preferences. There are four types of preferences:
- General: You can choose what items to be shown on the desktop
- Tags: You may create custom tags
- Sidebar: You can choose what items to be shown in the sidebar
- There are also advanced options, like showing all file extensions etc.
Use iCloud
This will let you view your files and folders everywhere. Here is how:
- On your Mac, click the Apple menu
- Click System Preferences
- Click Apple ID
- Click iCloud
- Find the iCloud Drive and click the Options button
- Make sure that the Desktop & Documents Folders option is selected.
See also: Dock Not Working?