Finder Window View Options

Now let’s look at how we can change our files and folders’ view. Let’s go to my Mac. I’m looking at my Documents folder here, and you can see that we’re looking at it in a list view. We have four different views that we can use. They’re located up in our toolbar. We’re also going to be able to change the view by going up to View in the menu bar, and then select it from our first four options here. We have icons, list, columns, and gallery. We can easily switch by going to the menu bar, or we can use keyboard shortcuts, or what we can do is we can go over to our toolbar.

Let’s first look at icons. I’m going to go over to icons here. Now, I’m looking at my files and folders as an icon view. If we want to rearrange these or sort these, what we do is we go up to View in the menu bar, and then you’re going to see Sort By.

Let’s go on and sort these by name. Select it, and now, my files and folders are rearranged by name. When we sort them by name, they’re going to stay sorted. If I go on and add a new file or folder, let’s go ahead and add a new folder. I’m going to use Command-Shift-N, and we have our untitled folder. Let’s just call this First Folder. What’s going to happen is that it’s going to move it to the beginning because it keeps them sorted by name.

Let’s go back under View here. We can also sort it by kind, the date that it was last opened, added, modified, created, and size and tags. You’re going to see we have here a Snap to Grid. When I turn on Snap to Grid, it’s not going to sort them, but it will keep my icon snap to a grid. Let’s go ahead and select this, and now, when I go and move this document here over to this area here, what it’s going to do is to snap it to a grid, it’s going to keep it aligned.

Let’s do that again. With this document here, we will move it over here, but I’m not going to move it to where it’s directly aligned. I let go, and it keeps it aligned by a grid. If you want to manually sort your documents and folders but still keep them arranged nicely in a grid, then you’ll use snap to grid.

We can access these same features by using our secondary menu. You’re going to see when I Control-click, I have View, and I can go and change the options. I can also go and sort them. If I go and change this to None, and I go and move a file so now it’s not going to keep them sorted by grid, and I want to clean this up, what I do is I go back under View, and you’re going to see Clean Up. When I do this, it will arrange my files and folders by grid, and now we can see it aligned them up. We can also clean up and sort at the same time. Those are different options for icon view.

Let’s take a look at list view. Click on List, and now we’re looking at it in list view. To see how they are sorted, you just go to the column, and you’re going to see we have this little up arrow tick. This means that they are being sorted. We just click at it to change the sort order, and now it changes the sort order. If I want to sort them by date modified, click on it, and now we can see it is sorted by date modified. Click on it, and it changes the order.

We can see we have other columns, including size and kind, and if we want to add other columns to this, what we do is go up to View. Then you’re going to see Show View Options, a new window opens up, and from here, what I can do is I can set which columns I want to see. Let’s go and add to the column Date Created, in addition to Date Modified. I click on Date Created, and now we can see we have date created. I can also rearrange these. To rearrange them, I just click and drag, and I can place them where I want. If I want date created next to name, I just click and drag again, and now date created is next to your name. Let’s close this window.

We also have column view. With column view, what I do is I view my folders by column. Each folder that I click on is going to be a separate column. When I click on this folder here, I’m going to see the column to the right. Let’s take a look at this, and I’ll look at my user folder. I can see more folders. I’m going to go up to Go here, and we’re going to go to Home. Now I have my macOS Mojave, and then I have my Documents, and then in my Documents, I have my folder. I can move files between these different columns, files, and folders. I want to move ziplining into my Documents folder; I just click and drag, and now it’s in.

Let’s take a look at our gallery view. I’m going to go back to Documents here. So my Documents folder is highlighted, and then we go up to gallery. This is new in macOS Mojave. I click on it, and now all my files and folders are located at the bottom here. Any file or folder that I select, let’s go and select this image here; it shows up as a preview or a gallery. Now I scroll over, and I can view any one of my documents.

Let’s go and select a Pages document. I choose lighthouses, and now we get a preview of that document. This is gallery view. We get to view all of our files and folders in a gallery. I double click on any one of these. Let’s go ahead and double click on folder, and it opens up that folder. How do we go back? We click on the Left Arrow. I’m going to go back over to list view.

The last thing I want to show you is our view options, again. We will take a closer look at this window, including how we can set how a folder is shown by default. We go up to View in the menu bar, and we go back over to our Show View Options. Remember, this is where we could set which columns we want to show. If we look here, up at the top, you’re going to see we also have Always open in List View. This is checked by default. The next time I open this folder, it’s going to open up in list view.

Let’s go and change this to icon view. Now, what it’s going to do is it’s always going to open up in icon view. If you do not want it to follow that, what you can do is you can uncheck this. Then if you go and change the view, I’m going to go and change the view here, and now I’m going to go back over to my desktop, and then go back over to my Documents. Remember, I change to list view. Watch what happens. It shows back up in my icon view because it will not always open it up in list view. What I do is I click on my List View, and then I set Always open in List View.

I can also set how I want it to be grouped and sorted when I open up the folder. We also have our Text size and Icon size. Go and make the text a bit larger, you click on the 12, and you can go and make the text larger. You want to make the icons larger; you can do that as well.

At the very bottom, we have our show relative dates, which will show me the date of a file and a relative term. In this case here, this file was created today. That’s because it’s showing me the relative date. If I do select this, it’s just going to show me the date itself.

I can also calculate all sizes. By default, we can see the sizes of our files but not of our folders. I’m going to scroll over to the left here. We can see that we have the sizes of our different files, but if we look here, you’re going to see we do not have these folders’ size. If you want to see how large a folder is, then what you do is you calculate all sizes. This will only apply to the Documents folder.

I’m going to turn this on, and again, this only applies to my Documents folder, and now when we scroll over to the left, we can see the file size of that folder. Then if we want to show an icon preview, I’m going to scroll over to the left, we can see an icon preview. If I no longer want to see that, I turn this off, and now they’re generic icons. I prefer to have icon preview. Once you set everything up, if you want to use them as your defaults, you click on Use as Defaults.

That’s how we can change the view of our files and folders on the Mac.