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The Finder has always been a very powerful tool in OS X, but in Lion there are now plenty of new features that you may or may not love. If you’ve just upgraded and want to make the most out of the new changes, or even if you want to reset your Finder windows to the way they worked in Snow Leopard, we have the perfect guide for you.
Whether you want to decide what sits in your Sidebar, make the most out of the new Search Tokens, or decide on the best way of sorting your files, we’ve covered everything you need to know about the new options available. If you’re confident you can even have a little tinker with the Terminal to restore a certain Library folder…
1: Sort it out
The Sorting Options are slightly different than in Snow Leopard. If you organise by Date, Finder will separate the days with horizontal lines of apps.
2: Access to the Library
By default, a user’s Library folder is hidden in Lion. If you want to access it you can hold down the Option (Alt) key when you are in the Go menu to see it appear.
3: Spring loaded
When you want to drop a file into a deeply buried folder you can hover the file over each containing folder and have it open after a certain amount of time.
4: Open the window
By default in Lion, a new Finder window will always open displaying the All My Files section. To make it the Snow Leopard way, set it to be your Home folder.
5: At the Sidebar
This section of the Preferences panel allows you to choose what is displayed in the Sidebar. Hover over a title in the Sidebar and a small Hide button appears.
6: Reorganising
When you’ve got what you want in the Sidebar you can reorganise it. Click and hold to ‘grab’ the section, then move it and the others slide out of the way.
7: Advanced settings
If you’re sick of the warning message before you empty your Trash, or changing a file extension, the Advanced tab allows you to configure these options.
8: Search tokens
Search tokens add parameters to your search. You can choose what type of thing you’re searching from drop- down menus and add multiple tokens.
9: Save a search
When you create a search token you can save it as a Smart Folder that automatically adds your specified files as you create them.
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This tutorial is the eighth in our Learn Lion Week series; for more articles just like this, visit the Learn Lion Week tag. At the end of the week, we’ll be giving away a prize to one lucky person who gets in touch with a question or problem related to OS X Lion. To get involved, simply tweet your question, plus the hashtag #LearnLionWeek, to @iCreateMagazine or post on our Facebook wall.
