In this lesson, we're going to talk about advanced finder techniques, no doubt, if you're taking
this course, you've already had some experience with Mako's and I won't bore you with the basics,
but I do want to show you some things that will aid you later in the course as prerequisites for some
of the techniques we will teach you.
We'll talk about the directory structure, library folders and the user template folder, all of which
will come into contact with as we get into other lessons later on.
And the start by demonstrating the get info option on your map.
So get info can be found by highlighting any icon on the desktop or in the directory structure.
Going to the file menu and choosing get info can also be invoked by highlighting something and holding
down command and hitting the letter I or you can right.
Click on it and you can choose get info.
So any of these will work.
I'll go ahead and double click on it here.
So when you're in the get info pain, there's a number of different things you can see here.
We've got options to add tags.
We have the option to rename it and we have the option to set permissions so I can share this folder,
assuming I have sharing turned on in the system, preferences, options, and then I can make changes
to the permissions on that share.
I can also share locally with other users of the computer by making adjustments here as well.
If I want to share the contents inside this directory and change the provisions to match so that they
all inherit, I can make those changes and I can hit padlock at the last minute, authenticate, which
I'll do here, and then I'll be able to apply those changes to the enclosed items.
So I'm not going to change anything for this demo.
I'm going to close this out.
I am going to show a couple of other neat things that you can see.
I was in the directory here that I was selecting.
I get different options if I choose a document.
So I'm going to go ahead and do get info on that.
And there's a few things I can do here.
I can hide the extension, which I have on by default, but maybe I want to see the extension.
Maybe I need to rename the the file name and rename the extension so I can uncheck that and make those
changes.
I get a preview.
Of the file here, if it's supported of a particular document type, and then I have the option to change
what it's opened with, so in this case, this is just an art file rich text document, as you can see,
with the size and everything.
And I can go in here and I can choose one of the other applications.
Maybe I want to open a Microsoft Word instead.
Maybe I want Alridge text file documents to open a Microsoft Word.
By default, I can hit change all.
It'll automatically change that.
So any other documents on my computer will open up in word instead of opening up in text.
That it.
Finally, the other thing you can do, which is kind of neat, this is a holdover from the very, very
early days of Macintosh is making customized icons for your files on your computer.
Let's say I have a shortcut to a website and I want a brand that shortcut.
Maybe it's a help desk icon or something like that so that my users don't see just a basic safari hyperlink,
but they actually see some sort of custom icon I've created.
So since this is a test document, I'm actually going to open up this test image and I'm just going
to open it up and preview and I'm going to go ahead and select all and then I'm going to hit copy and
then I'm going to go over here still in the test document, get involved and I'm going to click on the
icon so that it's got a blue highlight around it.
And I go up to edit, I'm going to choose paste.
And now when I close this out, you can see the test document is actually custom branded icon for my
use.
So that looks better for the user.
It stands out and it's much better, especially for shortcuts and hyperlinks than just the generic HTML
document that you get.
And the next thing I want to show you is how you can use the option key modifier inside the finder to
open up some additional options to you.
So let's go ahead and start with this test option here.
I'm going to take this document.
Let's say I want to delete it now.
I could probably just drag and drop it to the trash can.
But, you know, there's other shortcuts and ways to do this as well.
I can click on file and I could say move to trash and then I'd have to empty the trash.
So if I use the option key modifier and all I'm doing here is holding down the option key on my keyboard
and I'm clicking on the file option here.
You can see I can actually toggle this.
If I if I hit option, I can toggle this on and off.
As I go through here, you'll see I've got delete immediately or move to trash so you can see there's
some hidden options behind it.
I'll just go ahead and say delete immediately.
It'll absolutely delete it.
So that's a nice option here for the option key.
But that's really not I mean, that's really not what I wanted to show you.
But I really want to show you is how you get access to a few things that may be hidden by default.
For example, in the go menu, they've abstracted out the library folder.
That's the user library folder.
So I want to show you how you can get to that.
There's various different ways to do it.
But one of the simplest ways is just hold down the option key and then click on it and that will bring
this up.
So we'll cover the library folder here in a second.
Other modifiers with the option key, you can actually use this in different applications as well.
Sometimes it will change, save to save, as if you've ever used a Mac prior to probably El Capitan
Save as was everywhere.
And then all of a sudden the change should just save and duplicate.
If you want to bring save as back, you can use the option key modifier.
So I would just say almost anything that you do across the Mac OS holding on the option, you will bring
up and modify some different things and give you some options that you wouldn't normally see, particularly
in the menus.
Next, I just want to talk a little bit about the directory structure, and so I'm going to show you
a few things, probably the fastest way to get to your disks in the later versions of OS 10 is probably
through the go menu.
So the menu has a number of built-In shortcuts here.
And you can see the keyboard shortcuts as well.
We're going to go ahead and just go to the computer and that basically shows me my volumes.
And you can see here, if I had other drives connected to the machine, I'd have other ones listed here
as well.
I'm just going to talk about Macintosh HD.
So it was my internal hard disk and it's got the operating system and the library folder and my applications
and my user folders.
So if you take a look at the library folder here, this is where all of the settings are for most applications
and the operating system that are really shared across all the users on the system.
And you can also just get to some of these by going to go to folder as well.
If you know the folder you're trying to get to, like, for example, the library folder, or maybe
I want to go to the library developer.
I can just enter that path and it'll take me right there.
So you have the ability to either type in the path from the go menu, go to folder, or you have the
ability to browse using the shortcuts.
But this is where all your disks would be at.
I mentioned the user's folder.
So this is what's interesting.
So I mentioned in the last lesson about the library folder and you can see that Apple started to abstract
out some of these directories.
If I take a look here, I do have a library folder, but it's hidden.
It's a hidden folder for me.
And I can make the folder appear by going to go to folder and then just putting in the actual path,
which would be users.
And in my case, my home directory, D.R. Smith and then library, I can enter that and will actually
show it.
And you can see in the structure here, it basically the hidden folders kind of great out, but you
can see all the items are in here and then I can actually interact with them.
I can also pull down the option key modifier and click on Go and you'll see library appears that that's
my library folder.
And these are unlike the system library folder that I showed you for this library folder that's hidden
in my directory of my home directory.
It actually is just settings and preferences for applications that are unique to me on in my log in.
And so we'll talk about more of that later on in the course, but I did want to at least point out that's
how you get to that.
That's how you can find these things.
And depending on the application, there's a number of different folders in here that you'll see and
different things that they'll do depending on what you have installed and what services you're using
on your Mac.
I'll close out of that and then the last thing I want to show is just briefly talk about the user template
directory.
This is going to come into play later in the course, but I want to at least point out where it was
and what it does.
So I'm just going to go ahead back to my computer, go to Macintosh hard drive, go to system.
The system also has a library folder inside of it.
And down at the very bottom, you will see the user template.
Now you can see it's got this lock on it.
And if I get info on this folder, you'll see that the permissions on this are very unique.
So the system has a right access and everyone else has no access.
Now, I can modify that and I'm not going to do that on this video.
But you'll see later on we can modify that.
We can actually get into the user template folder and take a look at it.
But what I'm going to tell you that the user to have a folder is, is whenever you create a new user
account on your Mac, a local user account or a network account, it's the first time someone logs into
this particular Mac.
It takes that user template and makes a copy of it and builds the home directory from it.
So what you'll find is that all the defaults for every new user, the first time they log in the wallpaper,
the doc, various other applications and other settings that are default are all defined in that user
template folder and are copied into the home directory, including the library folder.
And that's how you basically set up the environment for a new user.
So by modifying the user template folder, we can make a unique experience that each new user that logs
in will get based on the things we define in there.
And so we'll talk about that later in the course.
But I did want to make sure that you could understand what it was and where it's located as a prerequisite
for some of our future lessons.