OS X El Capitan: The Missing Manual

Finder Tabs

The world discovered the miracle of tabs in web browsers years ago. Here’s a simple software design idea, modeled after the tabs of file folders, that lets you keep many web pages open at once in a single window. What convenience! What cleanliness!

But it took until 2013 for someone to realize that tabs might be useful at the desktop, too. That’s when Apple added tabs to Finder windows.

They do exactly the same job they do in Safari: They let you keep open the windows of several different containers—folders or disks—in a single window frame. That makes it easy to move icons back and forth between them (Figure 1-27), or even to view the same window twice in different views.

As a convenience, Apple designed the commands, keystrokes, and clicks to work exactly as they do in Safari.

Figure 1-27. Finder tabs are exactly like tabs in a web browser. They let you view multiple folders or disks in a single window, which conserves space beautifully. Tip: If you drag a file onto a new tab (like Recipes, shown here) and let go, you move that icon. If you move it to the Recipes tab and pause, finger still down, the Recipes tab opens so that you can continue your drag into a folder you find there.

Creating Tabs

There are almost as many ways to open new tabs as there are people:

• Press the ⌘ key as you open a folder or disk. (That shouldn’t come as a shock; you ⌘-click a link to open a new tab ...