macOS Sierra: The Missing Manual

Icon Names

Every document, program, folder, and disk on your Mac is represented by an icon: a colorful little picture that you can move, copy, or double-click to open. In macOS, you can scale them to practically any size.

An icon’s name can have up to 255 letters and spaces. If you’re accustomed to the 31-character or even eight-character limits of older computers, that’s quite a luxurious ceiling.

If you’re used to Windows, you may be delighted to discover that in macOS, you can name your files using letters, numbers, punctuation—in fact, any symbol except the colon (:), which the Mac uses behind the scenes for its own folder-hierarchy designation purposes. And you can’t use a period to begin a file’s name.

Frequently Asked Question: Printing a Window—or a List of Files

In Mac OS 9, I could print a Finder window. I’d get a neat list of the files, which I could use as a label for a CD I was going to burn, or whatever. How do I print a Finder window in macOS? (The File → Print command prints a selected document, not the list of files in a window.)

It’s easy enough to make a list of files for printing. Once the window is open on your screen, choose Edit→Select All. Choose Edit→Copy. Now switch to a word processor and paste. (If you’re using TextEdit, use Edit→Paste and Match Style instead.) You get a tidy list of all the files in that window, ready to format and print.

This simple file name list isn’t the same as printing a window; you don’t get the status bar showing how many items are ...