Change MacBook Dock and Finder settings

Change Finder and Dock Preferences

You’ve probably already figured out that as a MacBook user, you’ll be using the Finder and Dock a lot. These are two more areas that you can customize to your heart’s content.

Finder Preferences

You’ve discovered by now that the Finder is a pretty useful tool, but by changing your preferences, you can make it even more suited to your specific way of doing things. Open the Finder Preferences pane by opening a Finder window and choosing Finder > Preferences. You’ll find a number of tabs that you can use to change your settings.

General

Use the General tab to select which items you’d like to appear on your desktop. You can select hard disks, external storage, iPods, and connected network locations. You can also tell your MacBook whether it should open folders in a new or existing window and which folders you want the Finder to open in new windows.

Another interesting setting is the Spring-Loaded Folders and Windows setting. When this setting is enabled, you can drag a file to a folder or window and pause for a second to get it to “spring” open. This is helpful when the folder you want to actually place the file in is buried deep within a file tree. Use the slider to adjust the time it takes for the folders and windows to open. Pressing the space bar will cause the folder to open immediately.

Labels

The Labels tab allows you to assign a color to folders and files. You can edit the label names for each color from this tab. Creating and using labels is just one more way to keep things organized. For example, you could use the blue label to identify folders pertaining to household business and use the red label for work-related files and folders. Right- or ct r l-click on a folder to apply or change a label.

Sidebar

The Sidebar tab lets you select which items appear in the Finder sidebar. Check the boxes of the items you wish to appear and deselect those that you don’t want to show.

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