Finder OS X Guide

Finder is the heart of Mac OS X Leopard. It lets you literally access everything on your computer in a couple clicks from applications, documents, CDs or DVDs, disc images, etc. In this guide, I'll cover:

  • Home folder
  • Buttons
  • Sidebar
  • Macintosh HD

Home folder

The first thing you will see when launching finder is your "Home" folder. Its name depends on what you entered during your OS X installation. In this folder, you will see:

  • Desktop: This folder contains all the files that are on your desktop. Adding or deleting files in this folder will affect the files on your actual desktop.
  • Documents: What this folder contains is obviously entirely up to you.
  • Downloads: This folder is new in the OS X 10.5 Leopard finder. All your downloads from safari will go in this folder. Putting your downloads folder in the dock will enable a stack where you can access your latest downloads in a simple click.
  • Library: The library contains cookies and other temporary application support files.
  • Movies: This folder contains movies created in iMovie. You can also store your other video files to easily find them when creating DVDs using iDVD.
  • Music: The music folder contains your iTunes library. iTunes automatically creates folders cleaning up your songs by artists and albums.
  • Pictures: The pictures folder stores your iPhoto library. When clicking on a library, it automatically opens up iPhoto.
  • Public: Put files to share with other computers in your network or other users on the same computer.
  • Sites: This folder is where your website will be saved when using iWeb. You can save your websites created using other applications there too.

Buttons

Wether you are new to Macs or just new to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, there are new buttons in 10.5.

From left to right, we've got the red, yellow and green buttons as usual which close, minimize and ajust window size to fit the size of your application/web page, etc. Right under them, you have the back and forward button which work in Finder aswell as Safari.

More to the right, you have the option to show items as icons, list, column or cover flow. Cover flow is a new method of viewing your files in OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Cover flow gives you a preview slideshow of your pictures, documents or or videos. In the case of videos, you can actually play them right in the slideshow.

The next icon in the form of an eye is the quick look option.Pressing the space bar will do the same thing. With the simple press of the space bar, you see a full size preview of your document. It's mostly useful when searching for a particular text file without having to open every one of them to find your document.

The last icon in the form of a gear is the action menu. With an icon selected, it does the same thing as a right click or ctrl click. The only difference with the right click is the "new folder" and "new burn folder" options.

At the far right of the screen is the spotlight search field. Search any documents in your computer here.

Sidebar

The sidebar contains 4 major categories:

  • Devices: This has links to your Macintosh HD, iDisk (This is your online disc space if you are a member is the .Mac service) and every disc image currently mounted.
  • Shared: This has links to every shared computer in your network. It gives you access to the shared folders on those computers.
  • Places: Places is where you can access every major place on your drive. You can easily access Desktop, you home folder, Applications or your documents.
  • Search for: Search for is a new function in the 10.5 Leopard Finder. It shows you which files were modified Today, Yesterday or the past week. You can also view all images, movies or documents all in one place wherever they are on your hard-drive.

Macintosh HD

This is where you can access all the application support files and user accounts (if administrator). Be careful what you do in those folder as there are allot of files necessary to your applications. If you are unfamiliar with those kind of files, stay away from the Macintosh HD. You can store files there if you wish but you'd be better off putting them in your documents.