Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

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 2-20), 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.

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 in Safari, too.)

  Tip

  You can ⌘-click the names of places in the Sidebar of a Finder window, too, like Documents or Pictures.

• Right-click (or two-finger click) a folder or disk. From the shortcut menu, choose Open in New Tab.

• If you already have some tabs, click the button at the far right. (Even if you haven’t created any tabs yet, that button appears if you’ve made the Tabs bar visible; choose View→Show Tab ...