Finder Preferences
The Finder Preferences allow you to define various settings for the way your desktop and the files contained on it will look. This is not to be confused with the View Options which we will cover in a subsequent tutorial.
Opening Finder Preferences
To bring up the Finder Preferences dialog, select Finder Preferences from the Finder drop menu. Alternatively, use the Command + Comma key combination, as is standard for opening all preference windows for OS X applications.
Once open you will see that the preferences are split into 4 tabs: General; Labels; Sidebar and Advanced.
General Preferences
From the General Preferences tab there are 4 possible settings to play with.
Device Display
The first, to stipulate which of the following storage devices you wish to display when connected: hard disks; external disks; CDs, DVDs and iPods; and connected network servers. Toggle these on and off by ticking the respective checkbox on and off.
Window Destination
Secondly, you can specify which destination to open any new Finder window at. by default it will open with your user home, which makes most sense, but you can of course change this to anything you like, with predefined selections as Computer, Macintosh HD, your iDisk, Home, Documents or ‘Other …’ which brings up a directory selection dialog.
New Window
Thirdly, the option to “Always open folders in a new window” which pretty much does what it says on the tin, whilst last, but not least, general settings allows you to define availability and speed of spring-loaded folders.
Spring Loaded Folders
The spring loading of folders allows you to drag and hold files or folders over a folder, and which will, after the predefined period, perform the equivalent of a double-click and hence open the folder over which the content was hovered. This basically allows you to navigate through one or more folders without having to let go of the items you wish to drag and drop.
Label Preferences
In OSX labels are used for coloring files in the Finder. OS X provides 7 predefined colors, with the colors defined as the label names. Under the label preferences you can change the specific name given to any label, for example by defining the red color as Office-Related items rather than merely Red.
Sidebar Preferences
In OS X, labels are used for coloring files in the Finder. OS X provides 7 predefined colors, with the colors defined as the label names. Under the label preferences you can change the specific name given to any label, for example by defining the red color as Office-Related items rather than merely Red.
Advanced Preferences
The final tab of the four is the Advanced Preferences tab. This provides you with 4 settings, which you can toggle on and off with the appropriate check boxes.
File Extensions
First of all you can enable or disable file extensions. These are the last 3 or 4 letters ont he end of a filename that define what type of application file the contents of it represents. You may have heard of a .doc and know that this represents a Microsoft Word file, well of course there are thousands of these, and by toggling this option you can switch the visibility of these on or off.
The second, by default, is enabled. That is to say that any change to a file’s extensions, as mentioned in option one, will result in a warning, asking you if you would like to switch from one extension to the newly specified one.
Secure Erase
The third and fourth options revolve around the trash. Firstly, switching on or off the option for a warning prior to actually emptying the trash, and secondly to ensure that all files are securely deleted when the trash is being emptied. By defauly files are not securely deleted, which mean they can be recovered afterwards, if they are deleted by mistake. The other advantage of not securely deleteing files is that the action of deleting files securely slows up the process of deletion dramatically; and when you have a large number of files to dispose of, this can add a lot more time to the equation.
And so there you have it. The Finder Preferences!