A look at the Finder Window Toolbar

In this video, we’re going to look at the new toolbar we have in a Finder window with macOS Big Sur. We basically have the same tools. We can still customize it, but it does look a little bit different. Let’s take a look at the toolbar in a Finder window. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m in macOS Big Sur here. Let’s go and open up a new window. I go over to my Finder here. Click on it. And now we’re looking at my Finder window. Now up at the top is what we call our toolbar. We have a lot of different tools here, and we can customize this. If you’re coming from an earlier version of macOS, this will look a little bit different. But again, we do have a lot of the same tools. So even though it may look a little bit different, it’s still our same old toolbar.

Over on the far left, we have our buttons to close and maximize the window. I click on the red button, closes it. I click on the yellow button; it minimizes it into the Dock. I click on the green button. It’ll open it up in full screen. Over to the right, we have these two buttons here – these two buttons allow us to go back and forth in history as I browse around in my Finder window. So if I click on the left button, the left arrow. It’s going to open up my window that I opened previously. I click on the right one; it will go to my next one or that I opened up previously. This is the name of the folder. This used to be located in the middle of the toolbar; now, it’s located slightly to the left. Also, you’re going to see we have an icon there. That icon does not show up when you are looking at your window; you have to show, you have to place your cursor over the top of the name to see that icon. So now I move my cursor away, you can see there is no icon there. When I moved my cursor on top, we have my icon. I can drag this icon around. To do that, all I have to do is just click and drag this, and then I can move that folder where I want. So if I wanted to move this to a different folder, I just drag it on top of another folder.

I have my trash; anything I’ve selected will move it to the trash. When I click on this, by default, this trash is not in the toolbar. And one of my favorite tricks is to place it in the toolbar to do that. You need to customize a toolbar. I’ll talk about that towards the end of the video; I can also see my current folder’s location. I’m looking at Dan’s Tutorials here. So now, when I go over here to my path, I can see that Dan’s Tutorials is in the User’s folder, which is in the Macintosh HD, which is on my MacBook Pro.

I also have different views here. This is where I can select if I want to view my files and folders as icons, a list, columns, and a gallery, and then I can select how I want to arrange my files and folders. I click on this, and I can arrange them by name, kind, application, the date added, size, or tags. As an example, I like to have my downloads here arranged by date added. I can easily, see let’s go ahead and put this in a list view, now I can easily see what was added by today’s because it’s going to arrange them by the day.

Over to the right, I also have different tools. This is where I can create a new folder, open a new tab, get info on it, use a quick look, or arrange them. Anything that I have selected, I can share. And then I also have my tags. And then, if I want to search, I just click on the magnifying glass. It opens up my search, and I can search my Mac.

We can customize this toolbar. To do that, we just control-click on this, I hold down the control key, and I click, and from here, what I’m able to do is show the icon and text. So now I can see a description of what the icon is below it with text. So if you’re not familiar with these icons, you may want to turn on text. I can also hold down the control key again and click show the text only.

And then, if I want to customize it, I click on customize. And now, what I’m able to do is drag any one of these tools up to my toolbar. I can also move them around, rearrange them. So if I use AirDrop quite a bit, what I could do is take AirDrop here, and then I just drag this up to my toolbar, and now it shows up in my toolbar. To remove it, I just drag it out, and it removes it from the toolbar. If I want the default set, I go down to the bottom here, and I just drag this whole toolbar up to the top, and it’s going to replace it with a default set. And also, I can change what has shown the icon and text icon and text only.

So that’s a look at the toolbar and a Finder window with macOS Big Sur. Not a lot has changed outside of the look. A few items have moved around, but we can still customize it, and we can show the text to customize it. To show the text, just click on the toolbar with the control key. And then, from there, we can customize it.

So that’s a look at the toolbar in a Finder window with macOS Big Sur.