4 Ways to Edit Finder Window Sidebars on the Mac

Hello, my name is Dan Wassink, I create videos on how to use the Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV.

In this video, what we’re going to look at is how we can customize our sidebar and a Finder window. How do we add folders or favorite folders in our sidebar? Let’s find out. Let’s go over to my Mac.

So I’m looking at a Finder window when I’m in the Finder here, these windows are how I can browse all of my different folders and files. Well, when we look at these windows, you’re going to see that there is a sidebar over to the left. And the sidebar has or gives us access to various folders. So if I wanted to go to my Applications folder, just click on Applications here. And I’m looking at my Applications folder, I want to go to my desktop, I click on Desktop, I’m looking at my desktop, it even gives us access to different locations, I want to view my network, I can click on Network here.

So depending on what you have your Mac connected to, you can access those volumes or those files or those folders. Now, this sidebar shows on every Finder window. So when I open up a new Finder window, I’m going to go to file here, and we go to New Finder Window, we can see that we have the same sidebar. So no matter what window you’re in, we can always access these favorite folders and volumes like our network from our sidebar. Now what we can do is we can customize this with our own folders. By default, Apple will place specific folders in here, but we can remove these folders and even add our own. So I have here music, what I would like to do is add this to my sidebar, so then I have easy access to it. Well, the easiest way to do that is to drag and drop. So all I have to do is just click on this and drag it over to my favorites here. When I do, it places it in my favorites. And if we look at the other Finder window that I have open in the back, you’re gonna see that music is there. So again, it’s adding it to every Finder window. How do we remove it? Well, basically, all we have to do is just take this and drag it out, we do have to drag it out a little bit away from the window. If I just drag it out to here, it’s thinking that I want to move it that’s not what I want to do, I want to remove it. So when I move it out here and I keep removing it out here, you’re gonna see that I have the little x there. So now when I let go, it removes it from my favorites here. So it’s removing it from the sidebar, but if we look it did not remove the actual folder.

So it doesn’t delete the actual folder. All it does is just remove it from the sidebar. Now we can also remove any of these locations. I have here iCloud, I’d like to remove some of those files from all those folders from iCloud. Again, all we have to do is just click and drag, you’re going to see we have the x there, and it removes it. If I wanted to remove Ventura here, all I have to do is just drag it out. Or another way of doing this is by using the ctrl key I’m going to hold down the control key. And then I click on it, we have our contextual menu. This is called a contextual menu. And from here, what I’m able to do is remove it from the sidebar. I let go and now it is gone.

Now let’s say I wanted to remove a section maybe I want to remove all of the locations. Or maybe I don’t use iCloud, I want to remove all of the iCloud files here or folders here. Or if I don’t use tags, I’d like to remove all of my tags, we can also remove the sections. How do we do that? What what we need to do is go to our Finder Preferences. So I go up under Finder here, and we go over to preferences. If you’re using Mac OS Ventura, it’s going to be called settings but basically we have to go to our preferences or settings here. And then we have our new window that opens up and we need to make sure that we’re looking at sidebar. When we’re looking at our sidebar here we can see all of the different items that are in our sidebar, and anything that has a checkmark in it is going to show in the sidebar. So when I look at my sidebar here, you’re gonna see that I have applications and there’s applications if I want to remove applications, I can also just deselect this instead of using drag and drop and it will remove it. I want to add it back in. I can check it and now it is back in my sidebar. I want to add pictures in there. Well instead of using drag and drop I can also add it here

We can also remove categories I have here locations, if I deselect all of the different locations, what it’ll do is it’ll remove locations from my sidebar. So I’m going to deselect all of these here. And watch what happens when I deselect the last one. I no longer have locations here. I want to add them back in. Let’s go back with connected servers.

Now we have my locations in there. So how do you think I could remove all of the different tags if I don’t use tags, I want to remove them. It’s taking up space in my sidebar. Well, all we have to do is just go down to tags here and deselect it. And now tags are no longer showing selected again, and they show so in addition to adding specific folders in here, we can also remove the category or that section. just deselect everything in that section. Let’s go with iCloud here, deselect everything. iCloud no longer shows there. I’m going to check them because I do use iCloud.

So that’s how we can customize our sidebar with our different folders and even remove different categories on there on the Mac. The easiest way is by using drag and drop, but we can also go to our Finder Preferences or settings and then select what we want to show in the sidebar. If we remove everything within a particular section, that section or category will no longer show in the sidebar. So that’s how we can customize our sidebar with our specific folders or custom folders or even sections on the Mac.