We often like to have our folders arranged either by name or by kind or by date, but Mac’s right click(two-finger click) allows you only to arrange the files once. After that any new files you add just keep piling up at the end. There’s a neat trick to keep your folder arranged in a particular way. After the right click, just hold the OPTION key. It changes the ‘Arrange by’ to ‘Keep Arranged by’ and then you can choose how you want to keep your folder organized.

via Ankit Agarwal

You can watch a higher quality version of this video on YouTube, or on your AppleTV by searching for Mactips.org

This simple Automator tutorial will show you how to create a Finder plugin that will allow you to automatically attach any file to an email without having to drag anything or even open Mail.

All you have to do is launch Automator and select a custom workflow. You’ll need to search for 3 variables.

1) Get Selected Finder Items (then drag it into the work space)
2) New Mail Message (then drag it under the previous variable in the work space)
3) Add Attachments to Front Message (and again, drag under the previous 2 variables)

Now Run the workflow to test it out. If you get 3 green check marks, then select File>Save As Plugin…

Finally name your plugin (I named mind “Mail Attachment”) and make sure Finder is selected.

Everything should be set up, and you can now can control+click (or right-click if you have a two button mouse) on any file and select Automator>Mail Attachment to launch Mail and the file will be attached to a new blank email.

While working in Finder, sometimes I need to jump to Terminal.app to perform a command.

To do this I generally:

• Launch the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.app)
• Type cd
• Then drag the little icon from the Finder toolbar on to the Terminal

This copies the current path from Finder in to the command line.

This works fine, but there are a couple of unnecessary steps here. Fortunately MacWorld points us to a good solution: Open Terminal Here.

Open Terminal Here is an AppleScript that opens the current Finder window in Terminal.app.

To install Open Terminal Here:

• Unzip
• Drag on to your Finder toolbar

Your done:

Now to open the current directory in Terminal.app, simply click the icon.

Another utility that does this is the similarly named OpenTerminal. With OpenTerminal you can add this to the right-click menu and more.

Also, to quickly open Finder to your Terminal’s directory type:

open .

Other things you can do include customizing the icon:

Or making Open Terminal Here create a new tab if Terminal.app is already running.

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.).

Have you ever wanted to remove items in your Finder’s sidebar? Here’s a quick and easy way: Click Finder -> Preferences… -> Sidebar and you’ll see the window below:

Simply uncheck any unwanted items.

Finally you can easily hide search items, shared servers and that pesky iDisk icon.

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to print directly from your desktop, check out this 20 second video. This is great for those of us who print a lot of short forms.

If you’re unable to see the video, click on the title of this entry.

Thanks to Esteban Marin for sending in this great tip!

Have you ever wanted your desktop to look like the picture above? Of course not, but you might want things like bigger font, picture/document previews built into your icons, different grid sizing, basic information about your files and folders, and/or larger icons.

You can accomplish this not only on the desktop, but any finder folder/window by Control+Clicking, and selecting “Show view options”

A friend of mine and I were recently in an Apple Server class. In the course of the class every student is required to set up their server and client using the same username and password. With this little bit of information, the username and password, you can wreak havoc (in a non-destructive way) on your friends computer.

Open Terminal. Just about everything you need to be able to do is from within terminal. The commands are as simple as copying and pasting.

First, SSH into that person’s computer using their sharing name or IP address.

We’re not going to cover how to SSH, it’s very easy, and Google is your friend.

Fun with Sound

sudo osascript -e "set volume 100"

Speech and beeps are made even better with the volume at 100%! So turn that volume up and make them beep and speak!

Fun with Speech

sudo osascript -e 'say "Assistant to the Regional Manager" using "Zarvox"'

Of course this is only funny if you know Dwight Schrute. Creativity is crucial with the speech commands.

Fun with Applications

sudo open /Applications/*

This is my favorite. This command will open every application in the remote users /Applications folder. Pretty funny watching the dock go crazy up and down. For a sample you can try it on your own computer.

Fun with Power

sudo osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to sleep'

This will force the computer into sleep mode immediately. Combine this with a Speech of “You’ve been owned” for the win.

Fun with a combination of commands

I know my favorite is to open all applications at once, but this is a close second. You’ll want to run these commands about 1 second apart.

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to display dialog "System Error 0x0FE: Radiation leak detected. Computer will self destruct in 10 seconds"'

The copy and paste this 10 times, one second apart:

sudo osascript -e "beep"

Not so fun

rm -rf /

Warning!: This command will remove every file on the hard drive. Not so funny on a remote computer. Especially funny for me if you’ve SSH’ed into 127.0.0.1. Keep in mind, this will in fact delete every file on your computer. You’ve been warned!

There you have it. Now all you need is that admin password…

View more Terminal Tips.

I never knew you could drag items onto the Finder toolbar. So far I’ve been able to drag files, applications and folders.

This turns your finder into a second dock for quickly accessing frequently used items.

To do this, drag any item over the toolbar and hold it there for a second until the plus icon is added. Release and you’re done.

Thanks to Simon Putzke for the tip. Submit a tip and receive some traffic!

ExpanDrive is a beautiful OS X applications that mounts an SFTP (Secure FTP) connection as if it were another hard drive. It allows you to easily upload, delete, edit or move files like they were already on your computer.

I read John Gruber’s review of ExpanDrive a few weeks ago and decided to give it a try based on his recommendation.

The interface reminds me of Transmission, another extremely simple and sexy OS X application.

Setting up a new drive is extremely simple:

After connecting to the drive, you’ll see a new mounted drive in your finder window:

Changing directories, editing files and uploading is surprisingly fast. I wouldn’t recommend working remotely on files through this system, as a connection error can leave files corrupted. I learned that lesson the hard way.

I pulled up some remote images through quick look to see how ExpanDrive handled and was amazed how fast ExpanDrive actually works.

Of course, part of this is because of my Internet connection–but ExpanDrive only had a slight delay while displaying files. It emulates the file system very well.

There’s nothing to customize with ExpanDrive. The preferences page has four options:

ExpanDrive is simple but elegant. It stays out of the way in the menubar and delivers exactly what it promises.

If you’d like to access remote files through a network drive, ExpanDrive seems to be your best solution.

ExpanDrive costs $29, but has a fully functional trial you can try before you buy.