5 Ways to Find and Open your Applications on the Mac

In this video, I’m going to show you five different ways you can find your Applications folder on the Mac. Now I’m going to be showing you using Mac OS Ventura. But you can really use any of these methods across any Mac OS version, you could be used in Monterey, you could use in Catalina, Big Sur, or even High Sierra, all of these different methods, these five different ways of finding your Applications folder work across all the different Mac OS versions, let’s see how we can find our applications folder. Let’s go over to my Mac.

So I’m looking at my Mac here. And the first way is through a Finder window. When you open up a Finder window, let’s go ahead and open up a Finder window, I’m going to go to my finder in the dock here, when you open up a Finder window. In the sidebar, you’re going to see applications this is here by default. This is going to show in every Finder window. So if I open up a new Finder window, we can see we have applications here. Open it up again, we have applications. Now if you accidentally removed this, you can add it back in. How do we do that? Well, let’s first remove it, I’m just going to remove it from the sidebar doesn’t delete the folder itself, it just removes it from the sidebar.

And now we can see it is no longer on any of my Finder windows. So how do I add it back? Well, we need to go to our Finder Preferences. So I go up to Finder here. And then we go over to our preferences or in macOS Ventura settings, select it. And then we go over to sidebar, under sidebar, all we need to do is just check applications. When I check this, it adds applications back in the sidebar. So if you accidentally deleted it, you can add it back in. So that’s the first way it’s in any Finder window sidebar. The second way is through the menu bar. Now you do have to be in the Finder for this to work. So if you’re in another application, this will not work. So how do we find it? Well, we just go over to go here. And then undergo and this only shows when you’re in the Finder undergo, you’re going to see applications. When I select this, it opens up a new window. And I’m looking at my applications.

Now I mentioned that this only works when you’re in the Finder. If I open up another application, I’m going to open up notes here. So I’m looking at my notes, you’re going to see that I do not have go here. So how do I get back to my finder, there’s two different ways, I can click on the Finder here. Or what I can do is I can click on the desktop, the desktop is what’s in the background here. So when I click on this desktop here, watch what happens. It brings me over to the Finder. And then from here, I can go over to go, and I can open up my Applications folder.

The third way also only works when you’re in the Finder. So again, I do need to be in the Finder. This is a keyboard shortcut, you’re going to see when you go up under go here. And you go over to applications over to the right, we have our keyboard shortcut, Command Shift A or I should say Shift Command A. That’s what I have to hit and that’ll open up the Applications folder. So I’m going to close all of my windows here.

And now what I’m going to do is use Command Shift A. So I’m going to go with command shift a watch the bottom of my keyboard here, you’re gonna see my keys that I’m typing. So I go Command Shift A, and we can see it opened up my Applications folder. Now again, this only works when you’re in the Finder. If I’m in another application. Let’s go over to my notes here, I’m going to use Command Shift A again, you’re going to see a pop up on the bottom here, Command Shift A, it didn’t open up the Applications folder. But when I click on the desktop here, which brings me over to the Finder. Now I’m able to use Command Shift A, and I’m looking at my applications. Let’s go ahead and close these.

The fourth way is through spotlight search. I can use Command Space a keyboard shortcut, or what I can do is go up to the magnifying glass in the menu bar here, click on it, and it brings up my spotlight search. From here what I need to do is start typing applications because that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the Applications folder, I could actually type out the whole word Applications folder. So let’s go ahead and start typing this out.

You’re going to see that it is filling in applications and is springing up my Applications folder by default. That’s because I searched for this earlier in some cases. So what it may bring up is, let’s go back over there, it may bring it up down here under folder, so you may have to scroll for it. But if you search for it quite a bit using this method, eventually it’ll bring it up to the top. This is not my preferred way of using or bringing up the Applications folder, but it does work. Actually, as a little bonus, I use this a lot to open up application specific applications. This is a great way to open up applications without even opening up the Applications folder. Let’s say I wanted to open up the Notes app, all I have to do is just start typing notes in here and watch what happens notes.

There’s my Notes application, I hit return, it’ll open it up. Maybe I want to open up reminders, I start typing in here, reminders. And we can see it pulls up reminders, I hit return, it’ll open up reminders. So this is a great way of opening up applications. And it’s a way that I usually open up applications. But it’s not necessarily the best way to open up the Applications folder. My favorite way to open up the Applications folder to view all of my applications, maybe I’m looking for a specific application, and I don’t know what the name of it is, so I can’t type it in here. What do you do, then? Well, I like to add the Applications folder over to my doc, this is my favorite way of finding applications. So how do we do that? Well, all we have to do is just find our applications folder.

How do we do that? Well, we just go over to our Finder here, we have already learned this, go over to applications, I’m looking at my applications here, all I have to do is just go over to the left here, you’re gonna see we have the little folder icon, drag this little icon over to my dock, I have to drag it over to the right side of my dock next to my trash can, you’re gonna see that the dock actually slides over and it’s waiting for me to drop it there. Now all I need to do is let go. And we can see that my Applications folder is in my dock. Let’s do that one more time, I’m going to remove it. So I just drag it up, we have a remove allah God. So again, I go over to my applications, I just go over to the left, sometimes this icon is shown depend on which Mac OS you’re using. And Ventura, you do have to move your cursor over there a little bit, and then it shows. I click and drag, I drag it over to the trash not on top of the trash, but I just drag it to the left of the trash again, you’re gonna see that the doc is moving, it’s making room for this folder, I let go. And there’s my Applications folder. So now how does this work? Well, the beauty of this is it works from within the application.

I can be in my Finder here, I want to look at all of my applications, I just click on my Applications folder. I’m looking at all of my different applications. I have some nice big icons here, I just find the icon or the application I want and open it up, I can even search I can start typing. So let’s say I wanted to open up, zoom here and it’s down at the bottom. If I go z, it brings me down to zoom.

And again, this does work for more than any application. I’m in my notes app, I want to open up an application, I want to view all of my applications in the application folder. I just go over to the far right here, click on it, I want to open up zoom, I hit Z for zoom, I hit return, it’ll open it up. So I back down to view all of my different applications.

So those are five different ways to find your Applications folder on the Mac. And again, any of these work across all of the different Mac OS versions I’m showing you using Mac OS mentor, but basically any of these work with any other Mac OS, you could be on Monterey, you could be on High Sierra, you can be on Sierra, and it’ll work.

We can find through the sidebar, a new window and a Finder window. When we’re in the Finder, we can go to go in the menu bar, we can also use a keyboard shortcut Command Shift A, we can use Spotlight Search, which isn’t a great way to do it. But it is a great way to find application specific applications. And then my favorite way is by adding the folder to your dock, add it to your dock and then click on and you can see all of your different applications in your Applications folder. And you can do this from more than any app. So those are five different ways to find your Applications folder on the Mac.