Menus: Menus let you choose to do things, such as create new folders; duplicate files; and cut, copy, or paste text. I introduce menu basics later in this chapter in the “Menu Basics” section; you find details about working with menus for specific tasks throughout this book.
Whereas this chapter offers a basic introduction to Finder and desktop, Chapter 8 explains in detail how to navigate and manage your files in Finder. But before you start using Finder, it helps to know the basics of working with windows and menus; if these Mac features are new to you, I suggest that you read this entire chapter now and pay special attention to Chapter 8 later.
Anatomy of a Window
Windows are a ubiquitous part of using a Mac. When you open a folder, you see a window. When you write a letter, the document that you’re working on appears in a window. When you browse the internet, web pages appear in a window … and so on.
For the most part, windows are windows from program to program. You’ll probably notice that some programs (Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word, for example) take liberties with windows by adding features such as custom toolbars or textual information (such as zoom percentage or file size) around the edges of the document window and in toolbars.
Don’t let it bug you; that extra fluff is just window dressing (pun intended). Maintaining the window metaphor, many information windows display different kinds of information in different panes, or discrete sections within the window.
When you finish this chapter, which focuses exclusively on macOS Finder windows, you’ll know how to use most windows in most applications. And so, without further ado, the following list gives you a look at the main features of a typical Finder window (as shown in Figure 2-1). I discuss these features in greater detail in later sections of this chapter.
FIGURE 2-1: A typical Finder window in macOS Monterey.
Meanwhile, here’s what you see on the toolbar:
Close, Minimize, and Zoom buttons: Shut ’em, shrink ’em, and grow ’em.
View icons: Choose among four exciting views of your window: Icon, List, Column, and Gallery. Find out more about views in Chapter 4.
Group By menu: Click this little doohickey to group this window’s icons by Name, Kind, Application, Date Modified, Date Created, Date Last Opened, Date Added, Size, or Tags. Or, of course, by None, which is the default.
Action menu: This icon is really a pop-up menu of commands you can apply to currently selected items in the Finder window or on the desktop. It’s nearly the same list of commands you’ll find in the contextual (shortcut) menu when you right-click or Control-click that item or items. Note that some menu icons and items in these menus aren’t available (appear dimmed) until you select one or more icons in the Finder window. If nothing happens when you click a toolbar icon, click a file or folder icon to select it and try again.
Window title: Shows the name of the window (bob in Figure 2-1). ⌘ -click (or Control-click) the window title to see a pop-up menu with the complete path to this folder. (Try it now.) This tip applies to most windows you’ll encounter, not just Finder windows. So ⌘ - or Control-click a window’s title (a right-click or two-fingered tap on a trackpad will work, too), and you’ll (usually) see the path to its enclosing folder on your disk, though some third-party apps don’t follow this convention. To see the path from your hard or solid-state drive to the active window, choose View ⇒ Show Path Bar. The path will appear at the bottom of all Finder windows until you choose View ⇒ Hide Path Bar.
Share menu: Another icon that’s a menu. Click it to share selected files or folders via Mail, Messages, AirDrop, or Notes. Or click More to add other commands to your Share menu, such as Add (the selected item) to Photos or Reminders.
Tags menu: Yet another menu; click it to assign a tag to the selected files or folders.
Search: Click the magnifying glass icon and then type a string of characters in the field that appears. Monterey’s Spotlight search feature digs into your system to find items that match by filename or document contents (yes, it will find words within most documents).
Scroll bars: Use the scroll bars for moving around a window.
Sidebar: Frequently used items live here.
Forward and Back icons: These icons take you to the next or previous folder, respectively, displayed in this particular window. The first time you open a window, neither icon is active; in Figure 2-1, only the Back icon is active.As you navigate from folder to folder, these icons remember your breadcrumb trail so you can quickly traverse backward or forward, window by window. You can also navigate backward or forward from the keyboard by using the shortcuts ⌘ +[ for Back and ⌘ +] for Forward. The Forward and Back icons remember only the other folders you’ve visited in that tab. If you’ve set a Finder preference so that folders always open in a new window — or if you forced a folder to open in a new window, which I describe in a bit — the Forward and Back icons won’t work.
Top o’ the window to ya!
Take a gander at the top of a window — any window. You see three buttons in the top-left corner and the name of the window to the right of the Back and Forward icons. The three buttons (called gumdrop buttons by some folks because they look like, well, gumdrops) are officially known as Close, Minimize, and Zoom, and their colors (red, yellow, and green, respectively) are designed to pop off the screen.
Here’s what they do:
Close (red): Click this button to close the window.
Minimize (yellow): Click this button to minimize the window. Clicking Minimize appears to close the window, but instead of making it disappear, Minimize adds an icon for the window to the right side of the dock. See the section about minimizing windows into application icons in Chapter 3 if a document icon doesn’t appear in your dock when you minimize the document's window.To view the window again, click the dock icon for the window that you minimized. If the window happens to be a QuickTime movie, the movie audio continues to play and a tiny still image from the video appears as its icon in the dock. (I discuss the dock in detail in Chapter 3.)
Zoom (green): Click a window’s green Zoom button, and the window expands to cover the whole screen, including the menu bar. If you prefer the old behavior, where a window zoomed to the largest size it could but didn’t cover the full screen, hold down the Option key when you click the green button.To shrink the window back to its previous dimensions, slide the cursor up to the very top of the screen, wait for the menu bar to appear, and then click the green Zoom button.Another way to escape from a