OSX Lion Windows Driving You Nuts?

When it comes to my laptop, I'm a bit of a control freak. I live or die professionally because of this machine.

I've been very happy with the OSX Lion upgrade, except I was missing a lot of controls in the Finder windows.

By default, your windows will look like this...
window 0

Or like this (depending on your previous preferences).

Window1

The key is to go under the view menu and turn on several options:

  • Show Path Bar
  • Show Status Bar
  • Show Sidebar


Now your windows will look like this.:

window2

Much greater control. You can quickly switch between common folders with the sidebar. You can also drag items into the sidebar to add them. You can also press Command , or choose Finder > Preferences (when in the Finder) to customize windows more.

status

Along the bottom you see a clear path of where you are working. Importantly for me is a status of how full a drive is getting. When working with videos and photos its easy to overfill a drive (which can lead to major performance issues or corruption). I try to leave 10% of a hard drive free at all times. If I get to 5% I start removing things to backup.

While I'm at it, here's a useful tip to switch folders. If you command-click on a folder name, you'll get the whole path. You can now switch to a parent directory very quickly. If viewing the Path Bar you can also click in the string to switch folders.

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