The A Better Finder Tool Suite: Essential File Utilities For Mac

Microsoft's latest version of Windows 10 is, and it's full of great improvements and refinements to the world's most popular desktop operating system. If you've been using a Mac, you might be intrigued by Windows 10, now that it's in a matured state. While Windows and OS X (soon to be macOS) are similar in concept, in practice using them can be quite a different experience.

Apple's platform is full of helpful user experience features that make it easier to navigate the operating system. Windows has some of its own, but if you want to ease the transition from Mac to PC, here are a few of our favorite tools to make you feel a little bit more at home.

Seer Seer for Windows. One of the best things about OS X is the ability to preview files quickly and easily with your spacebar in Finder. Fortunately, I found, which does exactly that, but more. Not only will you be able to preview photos or videos with just a tap on your spacebar, but you'll also be able to dive into zip and rar files, as well as some of Adobe's project files from Photoshop or Illustrator. Lightshot Lightshot for Windows.

Taking a screenshot on Windows 10 can be a hassle. You often have to fiddle around with a combination of keyboard shortcuts or copy and pasting it into Paint.

However, there's an app I started using recently called. Lightshot provides a very similar experience to the native screenshot tool built into OS X. After installing Lightshot, all you have to do to take a screenshot is press the 'Prt Scrn' key (or you can set another key combination if your keyboard doesn't have a print screen button) on your keyboard and you'll be able to select what area on your screen you want to capture. From there, you can save it, copy to your clipboard, or share it to other apps. You can also annotate the screenshot afterwards if you want to highlight exactly what you want others to see in your screenshot.

Wox Wox for Windows. Apple's universal search tool, Spotlight is a core experience of OS X.

Whether it was finding certain files or launching specific apps, I used it every single day. Windows 10 has Cortana, which can perform many of the same things, but its interface isn't quite the same. Is an open-source app on GitHub that is essentially a Spotlight or Alfred alternative for Windows. You'll be able to search for apps, files, search on the web, and you can even add plugins to make Wox even more powerful which is something you can't quite do with Spotlight out of the box. WinXCorners WinXCorners for Windows.

Hot corners, which let you activate certain shortcuts by moving your mouse pointer to the corner of your screen, are a staple in OS X. They used to be in Windows 8, but were removed for Windows 10. Is an app that restores basic hot corner functionality to Windows.

It allows you to assign actions such as: task view, show desktop, start screensaver, or turn monitor off to the four corners of your desktop. Unfortunately, there aren't as many options or customization features as I’d like, but for basic hot corner needs, it gets the job done. Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

The A Better Finder Tool Suite: Essential File Utilities For Mac Free

The Finder is a classic Mac system component that's ever-present on your desktop, ready to help you find and organize your documents, media, folders, and other files. It's the smiling icon known as the Happy Mac logo on your Dock, and includes the Finder menu bar at the top of the screen. For more videos. A lot of hidden power resides in every Finder window. In this article, we've highlighted some of our favorite Finder tips and tricks to help you work more efficiently with files and folders on your Mac. Quickly Adjust Column Widths The Column view is one of our favorite ways of working with files, and we've got two quick column adjustment tips to make it work better for you.

If you open a new Finder window and the column width is too small to view the names of your files, double-click the bottom of the column divider and the width will automatically expand to fit the longest filename. Another useful trick is to hold down the Option (⌥) key when adjusting the column width manually (by click-dragging the divider).

This adjusts all of the columns in the same window at the same time, and also sets the chosen size as the default column width for all Finder windows going forward. Set a Default Folder for a New Finder Window If you often work with files in a specific folder, then it's worth setting it as the default folder that every new Finder window opens with automatically. Click Preferences in the Finder menu bar, and under the General tab you'll see a dropdown menu under 'New Finder windows show:'. Select one of the options in the list, or click Other. To choose a custom location.

Customize the Toolbar You can put more options at your fingertips when working with files and folders by adding more action buttons to every Finder window's toolbar. To do so, right-click (or Control-click) the Finder window's toolbar and select Customize Toolbar. You'll see a dropdown menu of buttons any of which you can drag up to the toolbar with your mouse cursor, as well a default set that you can drag up to replace any you've previously added. Add Shortcuts to the Toolbar You can add convenient shortcuts along the top of the Finder window to any app, file, or folder you like, simply by holding down the Command (⌘) key and dragging the item onto an available space in the toolbar. Merge All Open Finder Windows If your desktop is being taken over by multiple Finder windows, you can quickly unify them as tabs in a single window: With a Finder window active, simply click Window in the menu bar and select Merge All Windows. Reveal the File or Folder Path The location of a folder or file may not be immediately obvious when viewed in a Finder window, so here are a few ways to find out.

The easiest method is to right-click (or Control-click) the folder name and icon in the title bar. This will show you the full path in a dropdown menu, allowing you to quickly jump to any folder in the list. Alternatively, you can make the path constantly visible at the bottom of every Finder window, by selecting View - Show Path Bar in the Finder menu bar.

Note that you can double-click on any folder in the Path bar to jump straight to it in the current open window/tab. If you don't want the Path bar taking up space in each Finder window, you can make the path appear by default in the title bar.

The A Better Finder Tool Suite: Essential File Utilities For Mac Mac

Simply open Terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and type the following command into the Terminal window: defaults write com.apple.finder FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true; killall Finder If you no longer want the path to appear in each Finder's title bar, just run the above command again but replace the word true with false. Show the Status Bar Surprisingly turned off by default, Finder's Status bar displays two pieces of information that will come in handy when organizing your files. In the Finder menu bar, select View - Show Status Bar, and at a glance you'll be able to tell how many items are contained in the open folder, as well as the current disk's available storage space. Reveal the Library Folder Apple hides the Library folder by default to prevent less savvy users from fiddling with its contents and causing app/system issues, but if you'd rather have easy access to the Library folder, here are two ways to reveal it. For quick access to the Library folder from the Finder menu bar, click the Go menu, hold down the Option (⌥) key, and then select Library in the dropdown menu.

The A Better Finder Tool Suite: Essential File Utilities For Mac Pro

If you want to reveal the Library folder permanently, navigate to your home folder (found in /user/yourname/. From the system root directory), select View - Show View Options from the menu bar, and then check 'Show Library Folder' at the bottom of the options pane. Search Only the Current Folder The Search bar in every Finder window searches your entire system by default, but there's an option in Finder's preferences that lets you automatically limit searches to the folder that's currently open.

In the menu bar, click Finder - Preferences and select the Advanced tab. In the dropdown menu under 'When performing a search', select Search the Current Folder. Enter a Fullscreen Slideshow in Quick Look Most macOS users are familiar with Finder's spacebar-activated Quick Look mode, which offers a preview of the currently highlighted file or files, but fewer users will be aware of Quick Look's fullscreen slideshow feature. You can enter a fullscreen slideshow preview by holding the Option (⌥) key when you next press the spacebar to activate Quick Look. The desktop will fade out for a close-up of your selected images and/or documents, which can be scrolled through using the arrow keys or using the onscreen navigation overlay. You can also select the index card icon on the overlay to glance at all your selected files on the one screen. Got an essential Finder tip we haven't covered?

Be sure to share it in the comments below. Just wondering what those several things are? I feel the exact same way when i'm forced to work on a Windows machine. Maybe we can trade tips;) Haha sounds good! Here's what I've done so far:. I configured my folders a long time ago to display all of the folders at the top before any regular files.

Enabled the display of the location in the Title Bar. It's not copy/paste-able, but it's better than being clueless!. I've also enabled the display of the Path Bar at the bottom. I'm not sure which one I like better. Enabled the display of hidden items. Changed the searching ability to just search the current folder/subfolders.and I had no idea that pressing the Spacebar on a file actually opens that file!

I still find myself hitting 'Enter' to open things only to be renaming them.