Learn how to customize the Finder sidebar on your Mac and make it your own with handy shortcuts to your drives, folders. network shares and more.
The Finder is macOS’ built-in file manager. It’s what you see when you log in to your Mac: the desktop, along with the icons on it and windows. The Finder lets you access all your stuff, and its sidebar provides one-click access to special folders and other items.
But you can navigate your Mac even faster by customizing the sidebar. Follow along with us to learn how to add drives, networks shares, files and more to the Finder sidebar, remove stuff you never use, and reorder items to your liking..
Click the Finder icon in the Dock to open a new Finder window, then click the Finder > Settings menu and select the Sidebar tab. Tick boxes next to items you need in the sidebar, such as Favorites, iCloud, Locations, or Tags, and untick those you’d like removed. Close out the settings window and the sidebar will update with your changes.
If you’ve enabled tags, you can change the order in which they appear in the sidebar. Open the Finder settings, select the Tags tab, and tick the tags you’d like to see in the sidebar, then rearrange them by dragging.
You can rearrange items in the Finder sidebar directly from a Finder window. Just click and hold an item in the sidebar, drag it to a new position in the list, and release.
You can also add more items to the Finder sidebar directly from any Finder window. Just click and hold an item you access frequently like a specific file or folder, drag it to a spot in the sidebar, and let go.
With a few minutes spent customizing the Finder’s sidebar, the stuff you use the most will be a click away, whether it be a special file tag, a backup folder on an external drive, a network share, or something else. Are you going to adjust the Finder sidebar to suit your needs? Let us know in the comments down below.
Other Finder tips: