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Default Folder X 5.6 presents subtle, easy-to-access file-navigation choices that Apple ought to have constructed into macOS many years in the past. It’s lucky for Jon Gotow, its developer, that the corporate didn’t, as a result of it’s given him a canvas to discover, and it has grown and matured together with the working system.
With Default Folder put in, all of your open and save dialogs have a extremely configurable overlay that allows you to click on icons to 1 aspect or use keyboard shortcuts to get rapidly to the folder location you need to be in. Apple’s built-in navigation seems like a cranky previous jalopy in comparison with the jet-powered race automobile of Default Folder.
That overlay hides a large array of helpful and usable options, a lot of which I take advantage of each time I open or save a file, and a few solely weeks or months aside—however I’m glad they’re there. 5 big-top options are definitely worth the ticket worth, even for those who don’t go to all of the sideshow sights:
- Set a default folder (therefore, the product’s identify) for any app for its preliminary Open and Save dialog.
- Test “Routinely choose the final chosen file in Open dialogs,” and also you rebound to the place you left off working—nearly all the time the place I need to be or no less than close by.
- Cycle backward or ahead by means of probably the most not too long ago visited folders by which an motion occurred (open or save) with keyboard shortcuts, or choose these places straight by way of a dropdown menu.
- With “Default to the present doc’s folder in Save dialogs” checked, you hardly ever need to navigate to the place you need to save the subsequent file. You’re already there.
- With a dialog open, choose a Finder window within the background to navigate—you don’t have to depart the dialog. The way it works: Maintain down a modifier key (I configured it for Management), hover over an open window on any show, and click on to pick it.
I needed to work laborious to trim this record to 5 and omit a number of the dozens of different options you’ll discover useful, too: rename recordsdata and folders straight in a dialog, set favourite folders, entry Residence folders and mounted volumes, choose any Finder contextual merchandise for a file (like Compress) inside a dialog, navigate by means of the hierarchical folder record straight from dropdown menus, set keyboard shortcuts globally and domestically, preview with QuickLook straight in an Open dialog…you get the image.
Few items of Mac software program can declare the pedigree of Default Folder, which traces its origins to Gotow’s DFaultD launched in 1987. This developed into Default Folder X for Mac OS X, nonetheless exhibiting its power within the newest launch, 5.6, which offers full macOS 12 Monterey compatibility. That’s a whopping 34 years. (Monterey stays in beta at this writing, however few modifications are anticipated.)
This newest launch of Default Folder requires no less than macOS 10.10 Yosemite—a model launched in 2014—and works natively on Intel and M1 Macs. You may as well obtain older variations for older Macs straight from the developer’s web site. A single-user license is $34.95. Modest improve charges have traditionally been charged solely each a number of years for brand spanking new variations.
Default Folder is the primary piece of software program I set up on any Mac, and it’s the primary utility I persuade everybody I do know so as to add to theirs—in the event that they aren’t already within the know. It’s indispensable.
Former Macworld and Mac Gems editor Dan Frakes highlighted Default Folder in 2013, concluding that its “evolve-and-adapt technique is an enormous purpose why the software program has survived for 25 years—and why I nonetheless depend on it.” It’s solely gotten higher since.
Welcome to the return of Mac Gems, a column that ran for a few years and highlighted nice nuggets of Mac software program—apps which have a excessive utility, have a pointy give attention to a restricted set of issues to resolve, and are typically developed by a person or small firm. With the robust resurgence of the Mac in recent times, we need to have fun instruments we use and that readers suggest to take advantage of your macOS expertise. Keep tuned for weekly updates, and ship your options to the Mac Gems Twitter feed ().
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