Finder is the native software component within Apple’s macOS operating system that powers much of the file management experience across MacBooks, iMacs, Mac minis, and more. Not unlike Microsoft’s File Explorer over on the Windows side of the computing isle, Finder provides easy access to both local and cloud files, folders, documents, and other media, while also offering a variety of organizational tools to help keep your digital life neat and tidy.

Out of the box, Apple configures Finder’s visual appearance in a streamlined and approachable manner. This keeps everything clean and easy to work with, but it can also lead to extra file management friction and a loss of information density. Thankfully, the program does include a variety of customizable view options, which go a long way in optimizing things for productivity.

Here are five Finder tweaks I always make whenever I set up a new Mac computer. Put together, these adjustments have significantly improved my day-to-day file management prowess when traversing macOS as a whole.

Maximalize the Finder interface

Show the Toolbar, Path Bar, Status Bar, Sidebar, Tab Bar, and Preview pane

When you launch a new Finder window for the very first time on a Mac computer, you’re greeted with a simple interface with folders and file icons. For basic drag-and-drop and opening-and-closing purposes, this is really all you need, but you can significantly speed up efficiency by enabling hidden view options within the program.

By navigating to the View section within Finder’s Menu Bar, you can easily toggle on or off a number of options, and any and all changes are automatically remembered across sessions. I recommend turning on the following for maximum information density and for extra functionality:

• Show Tab Bar
• Show Sidebar
• Show Preview
• Show Toolbar
• Show Path Bar
• Show Status Bar

Add quick-access icons to the top of every Finder window

The Toolbar refers to the strip along the top of every Finder window that displays shortcuts, view and sorting options, a search bar, and navigation buttons for going back and forward. What many macOS users don’t realize is that Apple lets you customize which items actually appear within the Toolbar, and doing so is as easy as heading to View > Customize Toolbar… and then dragging icons onto the allocated strip section that appears on-screen.

Personally, I always set up an AirDrop shortcut within my Toolbar, which makes sharing files between my various Apple devices a snappier experience. Other non-default options available for pinning within the Toolbar include:

• Path
• Eject
• Burn
• New Folder
• Delete
• Connect
• Get Info
• Quick Look
• Preview
• iCloud

The Sidebar is a persistent interface element within Finder that displays favorites, locations, and tags for quick traversal across parts of the macOS system. It’s easy to drag-and-drop entries to and from the favorites section, and expanding and collapsing any given section is as simple as clicking on its respective chevron icon.

By navigating to View > Show Preview Options, you can control precisely what shows up within your Sidebar to dial in a setup that works best for you. Personally, I tend to enable Trash for quick access to recently deleted items, and I generally disable Recents, Shared, Network, and Macintosh HD from appearing in this part of Finder.

Adjust View Options

Organize folders to make them distinct from one another

There’s a good chance that you rely on virtual folders to organize the various files and documents you have stored on your MacBook or on an external drive. Within macOS, you can go a step further by dialing in on how each folder looks and feels within Finder. By navigating to View > Show View Options, you can control item grouping, sorting order, icon size, grid spacing, text size, label positioning, background colors, and more.

By creating a distinct environment for each folder on your system, you can speed up traversal, make parsing through files less of a drag, and add a sprinkle of personality to what is otherwise a fairly mundane user interface element.

Customize folder icons

Color coding, with corresponding emojis for good measure

It’s also possible to customize the look of folder icons using Finder, which remains persistent across macOS and other Apple platforms. You can designate tag colors for various folders, which will brighten up the look of the entire folder icon for quick glanceability. By right-clicking on a folder and selecting Customize Folder… from within the context menu, you can also emboss a specific glyph icon or emoji onto a folder’s icon, which is a playful touch I personally can’t get enough of.

Color coding is a well-known productivity-boosting hack, but I do wish Finder allowed for more than seven color options to choose from. By default, the options include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and gray, with no custom RGB or HEX color code picker available to play around with. With the glyphs and emojis, at least there’s room to mix-and-match a wide variety of visual folder designs.