Resizing Finder Window Columns

In this video, we’re going to look at how we can resize our columns when looking at a Finder window in the column view. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s open up a new Finder window. Now, right now, I am looking at these files and folders in list view. My favorite view is in column view. Let’s go ahead and select column view and see why I like it.

I go up to View in the toolbar, and then we go over to As Columns. When I do this, what I’m able to do is click on a folder, and I can see all of the files and folders within that folder in a column. So over to the right, I can see all the files and folders for Dan’s Tutorials. When I click on Documents here, I go over to the right. I can see all the files and folders that are in the Documents folder. I go down to Zoom. I can see all the files and folders within the Zoom folder. And I can keep doing this just going down into my different folders.

Now, if I want to go back, all I have to do is swipe, and I can easily go back to a different folder. So now I want to look at my Downloads folder. I click on it, and I can see everything in my Downloads folder.

What we can do is resize these columns. Now, right now, this column is a little bit wide. So what it’s going to do when I select different folders is to keep moving over to the left. What I would like to do is I would like to make these columns a little narrow, so I see more columns. To do that. All we have to do is go over to the right of the column. You’re going to see we have this little line, the cursor changes, and now I click and drag, and it resizes that column. Now it is only resizing the column to the left of the slide. It is not resizing all of the columns.

If I want to resize all of the columns, then what I do is I hold down the option key, and I click, and now it is resizing all of the columns. So now we can see more columns in my window. I didn’t make the window any larger. I just made the columns smaller. So if I want to make them larger again because it’s cutting off the name, I hold down the option key, click, and drag over to the right. And it’s resizing all of the columns.

If you want to go back to the standard column width, all you have to do is just double click on this line, and it brings it back over to the standard column width. So let’s bring this column here to the standard column width. I go over to the right, I double click. And now it’s a standard width. I want to make it wider; I go over to the right, I can make it wider. I want to make all of the wider, I click on the option key or hold down the option, key drag, and now it’s making all of the wider.

So that’s how we can resize our columns when looking at a Finder window in column view. All we have to do is go over to the column’s right; you’re going to see a vertical line; just click and drag to resize that column, the column to the left. If you want to resize all of the columns, you hold down the option key and click and drag, and it’ll resize all of the columns. To bring it back to the standard with you, double click on that vertical line, and it brings it back to its standard width.

So that’s how you resize your columns when you’re looking at a Finder window in column view.