How to create a new folder from selected files on Mac

Learn how to create a new folder from selected files on Mac to organize your files faster, and optimize your workflow.

Instantly move selected files to a new folder on Mac

Finder on Mac allows users to create new folders with pre-selected items, and to be honest, it’s one of my favorite features of macOS. All you need to do is highlight the items you want to place in a folder, right-click, and execute the command. It makes cleaning up files extremely quick and easy, and I find myself using it on a daily basis.

Put all selected items in a new folder on Mac

  1. Select all the files and folders you want to place into a new folder.
  2. Right-click or Control-click while the items are selected, and click New Folder with Selection (N Items). The number you see in brackets is the number of items that will be placed in the folder.
Create new Folder with selection on Mac

Immediately, macOS will put all those selected items in a new folder. Now you can type the name of the new folder and press the return or enter key on the keyboard

New Folder With Items on Mac

Use a keyboard shortcut

You can also use a keyboard shortcut to combine all selected files into a folder. The keyboard shortcut has a slight benefit over using the right-click action, as the keyboard shortcut allows you to place a single file into a new folder as well.

  1. Select the files you wish to place into a folder.
  2. Press the Control + Command + N keys on your keyboard.

If you want to undo the new folder and move the item(s) back to their original location, just execute an undo command (Command + Z).

Not only is the New Folder With Selection feature extremely handy for quickly organizing files, but it’s also accompanied by a pretty sweet-looking animation as well.

Features like this are why I adore macOS so much, in case you couldn’t already sense my admiration. What do you think about this feature? Do you use it?

Other Finder tips: