Customizing the Finder in MAC OS X (Making Finder Suck Less!)

Probably MAC OS X, Finder App is one of most complained App and has always given undesirable behaviors(at least for me). There are some quick workarounds that can make your favourite Finder Application less suck.

Hope this might be more helpful for the people migrating from Windows to MAC OS;

1. How to get Address Bar / Path Bar (I am Lost! Where am I?)

Solution 1:

You can Hide/Show the Address Bar(Path Bar) using View -> Show PathBar in the Finder Application. The keyboard shortcut is to press Option[⌥] + Command[⌘] + [P] at once.

The expected outcome(on the bottom of the Finder):

Solution 2:

You can also just show the path in the Finder’s titlebar with these terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES
killall Finder

The Expected outcome(on the titlebar of the Finder):

How to switch in to the middle of the path?

Solution 1:

You need to activate `Show Path Bar` for this. If you haven't activated yet; keyboard shortcut is to press Option[⌥] + Command[⌘] + [P] at once.

Then you can simply double click on the desired parent folder.

Solution 2:

There’s also a path button that you can add to the Finder’s toolbar. Right click on the toolbar and click “Customize toolbar. . .” Then, drag the “Path” button to wherever you want:

Solution 3:

You can also right-click on the title bar to get a path listing(see solution 2 on the previous topic to activate path on title bar).

2. Search on the current folder (WTH! These are not in my folder!)

This most hilarious feature. I don't know why they have by default enabled to search whole Mac Computer. To make it more clear... Go to any folder and search something typing on the Search box.

You will get a list of unwanted files which are also not in the folder you are currently in.

Solution:

Open Finder Preferences using "Finder-> Preferences..." from the menu. The keyboard shortcut is to press Command[⌘] + [ , ] at once. This shortcut is common for almost all applications in Mac world. Select `Search the Current Folder` under the "When performing a search" text. Okay that's it.