Leopard Tricks Tips and Tools

I was just fooling around with the menubar in Finder when I found that if you press the ‘option’ key you get some different options. Try it. Click on the Apple (top left) to show the menu, then press “option”. Notice some items change? Try it on the other menu’s (file, edit, etc).

One cool trick, if you click the apple menu, then press option you will notice the dots disappear from some items. If you click the ‘shutdown’ menu item the machine will shutdown without that pesky confirmation message. Neat!

written by James \\ tags: Finder, Leopard, menus

I don’t know whether this trick has already been mentioned:
In the Finder, in List view, you can navigate using the up/down arrow keys. Now that’s well known. If the selection highlights a folder, pressing the right arrow key expands the folder (same as clicking on the “open” triangle symbol on the left side of the folders name).

Pressing the left arrow key collapses the folder again. If the selection highlights a document in an expanded folder, pressing the left arrow key moves the selection up to the containing folder, which then can be collapsed by pressing the left arrow key a 2nd time.

written by svenson \\ tags: Finder, keyboard, Leopard, Tiger

If you want to simply rearrange your toolbar, there is a faster way than right-click -> Customize Toolbar. Simply Cmd-drag an item from the toolbar to a new position or outside to delete it.

Thanks to gary for accidentally stumbling upon this feature.

written by vrinek502 \\ tags: Finder, toolbar

If you hit alt/option + command + space (ignore the plusses) it brings up a search in a finder window with all of the contents of the Mac.

written by Chuck Norris \\ tags: Finder

Tonight I realized something, it caught me off guard for a second. Generally to quit a program I will hit command-q to quit the program. Tonight I wanted to close a Finder window so I hit command-q and to my surprise this actually killed the entire Finder process and not only the front most Finder window.

Now that I think about this it is the proper behavior but I would think that with something as critical as Finder they would make that command only close the front most window. I noticed that everything was gone, even the icons on my desktop. I guess this is a quicker way than dropping to terminal to sudo killall Finder.

written by jcrawford \\ tags: Finder

Did you know that you can click and drag the little folder icon in a Finder window’s title bar to copy/move the folder to another location?

A secondary click on the title or the folder icon brings up a context menu listing the parent folders of the currently selected folder.

written by Quarkomatic \\ tags: Finder, Leopard, path bar

Here’s an interesting Finder functionality built right into Leopard. If you have any windows which you’ve dragged outside the display are of your monitor, then when you move an item from one of those half-hidden windows to any another, Finder will un-hide the windows and bring them back into full view on your screen.

-Ethan.

written by Ethan Zara \\ tags: Finder, Leopard

Remember the good old days–basically 4 months ago–when you could search for a specific preference file in spotlight? Since Leopard’s release, some users have been noticing that this rather simple functionality has strangely disappeared in Leopard. But has it really?

Try a little experiment: Open the “preferences” folder in your “user/library/” directory. Pick out a preference file–let’s try “com.apple.iChatAgent.plist.” Now, close the preferences window, and go up to the spotlight icon in the upper right hand corner of your desktop. Try searching for “ichatagent.” Oddly, the preference file in question will not show up.

So how can you find a specific preference file if this is true? Well, the good news is that it can be accomplished in a couple of different ways (one of which involves tailoring search criteria using the optional pull-downs), but here’s a quick and dirty solution:

Let’s stay with the “ichatagent” example: First, you’ll need to drill down to the “library” folder in your user directory. Now enter “ichatagent” in the search field in the upper right hand area of the window. You’ll notice that the window goes blank with no results. Fear not: simply select “Search: Library” instead of “this Mac” in the thin gray bar above the search results field.

Voila! There’s “com.apple.iChatAgent.plist,” right where it should be.

So, the next time you need to find a specific preference file, remember you’ll have to actually be in your “library” folder (or the “Preferences” folder itself) to find it. A little odd, but at least you know you can still find those files!

Note: As mentioned above, there is another viable method that can be used to find your pref files which involves using the search criteria pull-downs and then (optionally) saving the search for later use. Although I prefer the method here, it’s always matter of personal taste!

written by rockmsockm \\ tags: Finder, Leopard, Preferences, Spotlight