Using the Finder With Just Your Keyboard

The Finder is easily controlled with a mouse or trackpad, but if you prefer to use your keyboard you can access most functions if you know the right keys to press.



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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using the Finder with only the Keyboard.
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So a lot of people like to use their Macs as much as possible with their hands on the keyboard minimizing use of the mouse or trackpad. However, one place where it is sometimes difficult to avoid using the mouse or trackpad if the Finder. You need to do a lot of selecting files, clicking, double clicking, and so on. But if you know the right keys and keyboard shortcuts to use you can almost get complete use of the Finder with just the keyboard.
So let's look at the three major views of the Finder. Icon View, List View, and Column View. Icon View is probably the least versatile. You can use the keyboard to navigate around but it's a little difficult. It's a two dimensional interface where you can move left and right, up and down. So here I've just gone to a window and it doesn't look like anything is selected. But as soon as I use an Arrow Key, like the right arrow key, it will select the first item there at the top left. Now I can continue to use the arrow keys, to move right and left and I can use the down arrow key and the up arrow key. So I can select any folder or file I want. If I want to dig down into a folder I can do that using Command Down Arrow. That will take me down one level. If I want to go back up I can use Command Up Arrow. So that lets me navigate just about anywhere. However, let's say I want to use one of the Favorites here on the left. There's no good way to access that with keyboard shortcuts. But you can get to a lot of the same places using the GO menu. If you notice in the GO menu you have keyboard shortcuts for just about everything. So, for instance, if I want to go home that's Shift Command H. If I want to go to the Desktop that's Shift Command D. Documents Shift Command O and so on. Now this won't cover any custom folders you've added to the Favorites Sidebar but it will allow you to get a lot of different places.
You can also use GO and then Go To Folder which is Shift Command G, to go anywhere by typing the name of a folder. I can activate that with a keyboard shortcut and then I could type a folder. Now I could just type the name of a folder and it will try to figure out what I mean. In this case I haven't typed the full path but there's a folder here that has that name. So I can easily select this and then go down into that folder. Likewise to go Up, If I start typing Documents you could see it selects Documents right there. You just have to arrow down to it and I can select it. So you really can get anywhere at all if you know what to type using Shift Command G.
Now what happens if you want to access one of these external locations like a Drive here or some network location. You can't click on any of these and they don't appear anywhere here. But you can use the Computer Level to go there. So Shift Command C will go to the Computer Level and then you can use the arrow keys. Then you can use Command Down Arrow to go into anyone of these.
Some other useful things are the back and forward button that work just like back and forward buttons in a browser. So if you look at GO you've got Back and Forward. The keyboard shortcuts are Command and Left or right square brackets. So I back to where I was very easily even if I jumped to a completely different location. You also can use Letters. So here everything is in alphabetical order which makes it easy. If I want to go to the folder called PDF Examples I could type P and notice how it jumps there because it's the first folder with that name. If you want to select things it's a little difficult in Icon View. Let's go to a folder here that has a lot of things in it. I can move around and let's say I want to start here. I can hold the Shift key down and use the right arrow and notice how it's selecting everything as I go. If I use Down Arrow it kind of follows this path. I can select an odd arrangement of things this way. You can't really select things that are noncontiguous. If I try to go up to skip something it will just deselect everything and only select the new item. But it is useful if you want to, say, select three things in a row there and open and do something with them. If you want to move things around you can do it using Copy and Paste or Copy and Move. So I could select a file like this. I'm going to do Command C to Copy. Then I'll go up a level and let's go down into Files here. Now if I want to Copy it here I can go to Edit and you can see Paste item will actually make a copy of it. Option Command V will move. So a quick Option Command V and I've moved that file to this new location all using the keyboard.
Now if I want to Sort I normally would go to View, and then Sort By and select one of these. Notice they all have keyboard shortcuts that you can use. So it's really easy to say Sort By Kind or Sort By Size. But if you can't remember all those keyboard shortcuts there are other ways to get access to Menu Bar items. One is to use Control F2. You may need to use the fn key and then select the Apple Menu there. Go into System Preferences and in there check keyboard, shortcuts, and then keyboard. This is where you'll find that so you can make sure it's enabled and you have it set to this or anything that you want. So by using this I can then arrow over to the View menu, arrow down, go to Sort By, and select one of these without having to remember exactly what the keyboard shortcut is.
I find it easier, though, to use Command Shift and then the Question Mark key. That brings up Help. Now I can arrow over here from Help and do the same thing. Or I can just Search. So if I want to Sort By Size if I search Sort By Size it quickly comes up with that menu item. I arrow down to it. It shows me where it is but I don't have to actually go there. I can just press Return and you can see it Sorts By Size. So Shift Command and? and then let me do name. I'll go down to Sort By Name and now I'm back to sorting that way.
Now let's change to List View. You can change a view by going to View, and then using Command 1, Command 2, Command 3. So let's do that. Command 2 takes me to List View here. Now I could use the arrows keys to go Up and Down, if I want. Right arrow and Left arrow don't do anything in this particular case. But let's use Command Up Arrow to go up a level. Now if I want to expand one of these folders I can do it using right arrow. Right arrow will expand a folder. Left arrow will Close it. So I can easily Open and Close. Now what's nice is if I open it and then I go down, left arrow will take me back to the folder. Another left arrow will Close it. So it's easy to open up and folder, look down, not finding what I want, two left arrows will close it.
You can use a lot of the same commands here I showed you with Icon View. So if I want to select something I can hold Shift down and then use the arrow keys and select a range. I can also press a letter key and it will jump to the first thing it finds that has that letter. I can also use the same Sort shortcuts here. Sort By and you can see they are the same. Or I can use that Help trick with Command Shift? and then type something and then arrow down to it and sort that way. So I can avoid having to click here to change the sort. Also I did mention before if you want to rename a file you simply select it like this and press Return and now you've got Rename. You can see it here under File, Rename. It doesn't show a shortcut there so a lot of people don't know that you can use Return to actually rename a file.
Opening a file by the way can be done really easily using Command O. You can see that here in File, Open. So Command O will open this file. Another way to open a file is Command Down Arrow. Command Down Arrow goes into something but also will open a file. You can use Command Down Arrow on a folder as well here. So if I want to go down into Files folder I can do Command Down Arrow. It doesn't open it up. It actually takes me down to that level. I can use Command Up Arrow to go up.
Another thing I like to do at any level is to show a Preview of what I'm looking at. So, for instance, if I wanted to take a look at this file right here I can do Spacebar to bring up QuickLook. But I don't actually like using QuickLook. Instead I like using the Finder Preview. The problem with QuickLook is it obscures what is behind it. So I can still use the arrow key say to change the file and look at different files like that. But sometimes it's completely obscured and you're just using the arrow keys kind of with a blindfold on. But if instead you use Finder Preview, which you can get to with View, and then Show Preview, Shift Command P, you get this nice preview on the right side. It will show you a preview of just about anything. So, for instance, here it will show me image previews. You could see this in Icon View as well. If I switch to Icon View here you could see I've got Preview there on the right and I can go into a folder like this and then preview the file. Then it's easy to do Shift Command P to get that space back.
Now if I want to open up a folder like this and I use the right arrow to do it you can see there's another folder inside. I can go down to that and open that one up, go down to this one and open this one up. I can do that all at once by going here and using Option Right Arrow. It will open up the selected folder and also all the folders underneath will be opened up as well. Then you can use Option left arrow, I can do it here, and it closes everything underneath. Now what if you wanted to open all of these folders at once. Well, the way to do that is select them all and use right arrow. Now I showed you how to use Shift to select multiple items. But if you want to select everything then a quick Command A, it's under Edit, Select All. Command A selects everything. Then right arrow will then open everything that is selected. So it opens all the files. Since you now have the folders all still selected you could use Left Arrow to close them all at once. If you use Option Right Arrow notice how it opens up all the folders and all of the sub folders, everything at once.
Let's switch to Column View. I'm going to use Command 3 to do that. I like Column View a lot. It's not as versatile as List View but sometimes it can give you a much clearer way to find files. You can use Up and Down Arrows. You can use right arrow to go down into a folder. So you can go down to one folder. Then you can use a letter to jump and maybe you could go up into here and go down to another folder and down to another folder and keep digging. By default the Column View has a Preview window on the right but you could close it with Shift Command P like that. All the other keyboard commands I talked about pretty much work the same here in Column View. Even the ability to Sort. You can use the same sort shortcut or simply use the Help menu to get to those.
Now I often hear that people want keyboard access to the Context Menu. That's what you get when you right click, two finger click on a trackpad or Control Click on a file. You get all of this. It would be nice to have keyboard access to that. But there is no way to get keyboard access. However, usually everything in here is available in the regular menu as well. So all those items can be found throughout here if you know where to look. Most of those would have keyboard shortcuts, of course.
So that's how you can use the Finder with just the keyboard. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching. Related Subjects: Finder (244 videos), Keyboard Shortcuts (57 videos)
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