Exploring Finder Preferences

Reader Jean Pierre writes:

If you click on the Finder icon in the Dock, it will open you Home folder. You can change that. Go to Finder Preferences > General > New Finder window opens and from the popup menu, choose any folder you want (I like the Applications folder)

While this is a great tip in itself, there’s a lot more that you can do with the Finder preference pane. As mentioned before, from the General tab, it is possible to change the default folder that pops up when you click the Dock’s Finder icon. You can also choose to have new folders always open in a separate window. From here, you can also decide what you want to appear on the Desktop.

The labels section is self explanatory. From here, you can rename the various color labels. One suggestion I have would be to assign different colors for different school subjects or work projects.

The sidebar tab is also very straightforward, you choose what you want to appear in your sidebar, simple as that.

Finally, we have the advanced tab. By default, Finder will show you a warning before emptying the trash, and will warn you before you change the extension of a file. The 2 options that are disable by default are “Empty Trash securely” and “Show all file extensions” (.jpg, .pdf, etc.).