Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Tip 123
Know Exactly Where You Are
There are a variety of ways of seeing at a glance where you are in Finder, as
follows.
Using a Better Path Bar
Finder can show the path to the currently browsed folder (that is, something
like Macintosh HD→Users→John→Music→MP3 collection). Just click View
→Show Path Bar. However, there's a slight problem—the path is listed from
the root of the hard disk up to the current directory. If all you ever do is
browse your home directory, then this information isn't much use, and the
display can get bunched up very quickly. Luckily, there's a secret setting you
can use to cause the path bar to relate everything it shows to your home
folder. In other words, should you browse your Pictures folder, the path bar
will read something like John→Pictures, rather than Macintosh HD→Users
→John→Pictures.
Open a Terminal window (open Finder, select the Applications list, and then
in the list of applications double-click Terminal within the
UTILITIES
folder), and
type the following:
DEFAULTS WRITE COM.APPLE.FINDER PATHBARROOTATHOME -BOOL TRUE;KILLALL FINDER
The changes will take effect immediately. See
Figure 20,
Improving the Finder
path bar: before and after
.
Should you want later to revert to the default path
bar, open a Terminal window, and type the following:
DEFAULTS DELETE COM.APPLE.FINDER PATHBARROOTATHOME;KILLALL FINDER
Figure 20—Improving the Finder path bar: before and after
