Opening Recent Folders from the Dock

In this video, we’re going to look at a new way to access our recent folders with macOS Catalina. Let’s go to my Mac. Now, let’s first recap on how we access our recent folders through previous versions of macOS. We went up to Go in the menu bar, and then we went over to recent folders. Now, this is grayed out because I haven’t accessed any folders. Let’s go ahead and access a few folders. I’m just going to go down to my Finder here, and now I’m looking at my recents. Let’s go and open up my Documents, and let’s go and open up my Desktop. Now, I’ve accessed a few folders. When we go back under Go here, and you do have to be in the Finder.

When we go over to Go, you’re going to see; I can now access my recent folders. The folders I can access are Recents, Documents, and Desktop. If you want to clear this, you click on Clear, and it’ll clear it. That’s how we’ve accessed our Recent folders in past versions of macOS. With macOS Catalina, we can also access the same folders, our recent folders through the Finder icon in the dock. All I have to do is click and hold, and you’re going to see my same three folders.

Let’s go and open up another folder. I’m just going to click on this, and we’re going to go over to my Downloads. What do you think we’re going to see when I click and hold on the Finder? Downloads, because I recently opened it up.

In addition to accessing this from the Go menu, you can also access your recent folders from the Finder icon. If you want to clear this list, you still have to go up to the Go menu and then go over to Recent folders and select Clear Menu. When you use the finder icon here to open up a recent folder, it does open it up in the background when you’re in another app. As an example, I’m going to open up Safari here, and now I want to open up my Documents folder. I go over to my Finder, click and hold, and we go over to Documents.

Now, watch what happens. Right now, I’m in Safari. Watch what happens. It’s going to open up my Documents folder in the background. Being that, that folder is in back of my Safari window. I can’t see it. It did open up my Documents folder, but it is behind this window here. If I were to move this window, we’d be able to see my Documents folder. When you use this option to open up a recent folder, it does not that folder to the front. It leaves it in the back.

Let’s go ahead and open up my Downloads. Watch what happens. It opened it up, but it left it in the back. That’s a new way that we can access our recent folders with macOS Catalina. In addition to going up to the menu bar, when we’re in the Finder and Go to Go, we can click and hold on the Finder icon in the dock. When we use the Finder icon to open up a recent folder, it does open it up in the background.

That’s how we open up our recent folders in macOS Catalina.